if he would but have applyed to the case of the Christian Church it would have prevented the pains of all his ensuing Discourses for that being a Society of it self as founded upon Divine Right and Power of governing it self being necessary to Society what can be more evident from the nature of things themselves than that the Church must be endued with such a Power So that once supposing Society that alone infers Government and all the acts of it and to this purpose our Authour observes out of the Jewish Doctors if their Authority be to any purpose that whereas there were six Laws given by God to our first Parents to oblige all mankind the last was de Judiciis for as much as without that all the rest would have been ineffectual thus whereas Idolatry and Blasphemy which refer only to the Worship of God were forbidden by the two first they could never have had the force of Laws among mankind unless some Persons were indued with a power of judging of the nature of those Crimes and inflicting punishments in pursuance of their Sentence which he styles not only the Soul of Government but the noblest faculty of that Soul and the noblest act of that faculty And therefore when our Authour disputes whether the Christian Excommunication were taken from the Jews or the Heathen and leaves the case doubtful in that it was in Use among most nations civil and barbarous as well as the Jews as he proves by a vast collection out of the Records of the Greeks the Romans Arabians Germans Gauls Britans and others his most proper conclusion would have been That so universal a Practice could be derived from nothing less than the common sense of mankind The two next Periods are from Moses to the Captivity when the Jews enjoyed the civil jurisdiction of their own Common-wealth and from the Captivity to our Saviour when they were either wholy deprived of it or limited in its exercise according to the pleasure of the Princes to whom they were subject In the first interval he proves at large that they had no such punishment as Excommunication strictly so called but that all Officers whatsoever were punished with a loss or abatement of their civil Liberties But being deprived of the power of the Sword or the civil Government in the time of their Captivity they were forced having no more effectual way to punish Offenders against their Law by shame and dishonour As pregnant proofs both these of the necessity of Excommunication in the Christian Church as a modest man could well have desired For what can follow with greater clearness of Reason than that If the Jewish state had no Use of meer Excommunication whilst it was indued with a power of restraining vice by the civil Sword and that when it was deprived of this Power it was forced by the meer necessity of the thing to make Use of this punishment that therefore the Society of the Church having no Power of temporal coercion to punish offences against the Laws of the Society must be vested with some other power of punishment suitable to the nature and end of its Constitution Otherwise it would be a Society founded by God himself without sufficient means to govern that is preserve it self And if it have a Right or power of Discipline within it self that is the only thing that the Church demands and that our Authour denies But of these two long Periods the account as to our purpose is very short for as for the first it is granted on all hands That the Rights of Church and State were granted by the same Charter and the power of Government vested in the same Persons and therefore all their acts of jurisdiction carried in them according to the nature of the Society both a civil and Ecclesiastical Authority Whereas the Christian Church is of a quite different Constitution It is a Kingdom indeed but not of this world indued with no temporal power and instituted purely for spiritual ends and therefore its Government if it have any must be suitable to its Institution distinct from that of the civil State and enforced by such penalties as are peculiar to the Society the greatest whereof is to be cast out of it which answers to putting to death by the civil Sword So that the different constitution of these two Societies being consider'd it unavoidably follows Because the Jewish Magistrates had a compleat jurisdiction in all things that therefore the jurisdiction proper to the Church that has no civil Power must be meerly spiritual and if it have any jurisdiction proper to it self that is enough to our purpose against them who say it has none As for the second that Excommunication was taken up in the time of the Captivity meerly to supply the want of the civil Sword it is as clear an Instance as could have been produced of the necessity of this or the like punishment in all Society where there is no other coercive Power But here by the way though I do not doubt that this punishment was then first made Use of upon this ground yet I must confess that I am not satisfied of the Account that our Authour and other learned men give of it out of the Talmudical Writers For beside that they all writ when their Nation was debauched with Misnical and Talmudical Fables than which it is hard to invent any thing more absurd and silly they who were in comparison but very modern Writers had no other means of knowing what was done from the time of the Captivity but from the writings of the Prophets and the Histories of those times and therefore their Reports can have no Authority but as justified by those ancient Records And whereas Mr. Selden tells us for the Reputation of his own Learning Si cui hic dubium forsan occuâ—rat utrum corpori scriptoribus talmuaiâ—is hujusmodi in rebus quatenus historicae sunt id est quatenus in eis pro jure qualicunque Ebreis veteribus recognito atque usitato traâ—untur fides sit habenda eo scilicet quod corpus illud quo jam habetur contextum scriptoresque illi caeteri saeculorum sunt Templi urbisque excidio recentiorum is for san etiam dubitabit de Justiniani seu Triboniani fide dum Modestini Papiniani Florentini Alpheni Proculi Celsi ejusmodi aliorum qui trecentis aut circiter sunt Justiniano annis vetustiores sententias atque scita juris alibi non reperta He might have observed that these two cases were vastly different for there were certain Records and Reports of those famous Lawyers which were conveyed by writing from age to age as were the writings of other Authors Whereas there are no footsteps of any Monuments for the Rabinical Fable and as they have no ancient Authority so they discover themselves by their own foolishness to have been the inventions of a very barbarous and degenerate Age. so that our Authour if he would have found a parallel
THE CASE OF THE Church of England Briefly and truly stated In the three first and fundamental PRINCIPLES Of a Christian Church I. The Obligation of Christianity by Divine Right II. The Jurisdiction of the Church by Divine Right III. The Institution of Episcopal Superiority by Divine Right By S. P. a Presbyter of the Church of England LONDON Printed for Henry Faithorne and John Kersey and sold by Walter Davis in Amen-Corner 1681. A Scheme of the general CONTENTS PART I. THree popular Principles destructive of the Church of England Page 1. The absurdity of Mr. Hobb's Principle that the Sovereign Power is the only founder of all Religion in every Commonwealth p. 7 Mr. Seldens account of the Jurisdiction of the Church to be meerly Civil p. 27 His account of Excommunication from Adam to Moses considered p. 37 The same from Moses to the Captivity and from the Captivity to the time of our Saviour p. 42 The same in our Saviours time and first as to its Usage p. 54 Secondly as to the Right which is proved to have been neither Judicial nor Imperial but purely Divine p. 62 Excommunication in the Christian Church proved to have been of Apostolical Antiquity p. 71 The Texts of Scripture upon which it is grounded carry in them true and proper Jurisdiction and appropriate its exercise to the Church p. 76 And that by Divine Institution not meer voluntary Confederacy p. 89 All Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction left entirely by the Christian Emperours to the Ecclesiastical State and that the Imperial Laws extant both in the Theodosian Code and Justinian are no new Laws but only the Canons of the Church ratified with temporal Penalties p. 91 PART II. AN account of the birth of the Opinion that there was no Form of Government setled in the Christian Church by Divine Institution Page 117 That our Saviour founded his Church in an imparity of Ecclesiastical Officers demonstrated this imparity proved to consist in a superiority of Power as well as Order and the Institution of it shewn to be of perpetual obligation p. 124 The Authority of the Apostolical Practice vindicated against divers exceptions The vanity and absurdity of the Objection from the ambiguity of the names Bishop and Presbyter The divine Obligation of Apostolical practice in this matter proved p. 135 The practice of the Primitive Church in the Ages next and immediately after the Apostles The pretence of the defect of the Records of the Church in the first Age falls as foul upon Christianity it self as the Form of Government p. 143 The Argument first from the defect as to places considered and confuted p. 148 Secondly front the defect as to Times and Persons p. 150 The constant Tradition of the Church proved first by the Testimony of St. Clement of Rome Secondly of Ignatius his Epistles demonstrated to be genuine p. 155 The same proved from the Apostolical Canons and the Canons proved to be of Primitive Antiquity p. 177 The Testimonies of the Ancients vindicated from the pretence of ambiguity and first in that they have not informed us whether the Succession were only of Order or of Power p. 183 Secondly In that it is not universal but whether it be or not it is sufficient in that there are no Records against it and the Records of all the chiefest Churches are clear for it p. 189 Thirdly In that this Succession is sometimes attributed to Presbyters this shewn to be apparently false and if it were true frivolous p. 203 That the ancient Church owned Episcopacy as of Divine Institution and not Ecclesiastical p. 213 St. Jeroms Authority throughly considered and turned upon himself so as to make this Objection out of him against it the strongest Argument to prove the Divine Institution of Episcopacy p. 216 The Custom of the Church of Alexandria of the Ordination of their Bishop by Presbyters refuted and the Story of Eutychius concerning it shewn to be false and foolish p. 231 If we take away the Divine Right of some Form of Church-Government it unavoidably resolves the Church into Independency and Confusion p. 243 The Government of the Church by Episcopacy as setled by Divine Right the only effectal Bulwork against Popery p. 252 A Postscript p. 263 PART I. WHEN I consider on one side with what triumph the Church of England was together with His Majesty restored with what Laws guarded with what Vigour asserted with what Zeal defended and on the other with what folly and peevishness opposed that none of its implacable Enemies have ever been able to discover any the least real Defects or Corruptions in its Constitution That by the confession of all wise men it approaches nearest of any Church in the World to the primitive Purity that it is free from all Impostures and Innovations that it does not abuse its Children with Pious Frauds and Arts of Gain nor sacrifise the Interests of Souls to its own Wealth and Grandeur that it asserts the Rights of Princes against all Priestly Usurpations that it does not enrage the People with Enthusiasm on one hand nor enslave them with Superstition on the other That its Doctrins are Pure Simple and Apostolical and its Discipline Easie Prudent and Merciful In a word that it is a Church that wants nothing but only that we would suffer her to be what she professes and desires to be When I say I considered all this with my self it could not but strike me with wonder and amazement that a Church so unanimously owned so powerfully protected so excellently constituted so approved by all wise and good men should in all this time be so far from obteining any true and effectual settlement that it should be almost stript naked of all the Rights and Priviledges of a Christian Church exposed to scorn and contempt deserted by its Friends trampled upon by its Enemies and truly reduced to the state of the Poor despised Church of England But then considering farther with my self what might be the grounds and occasions of such a wild and seemingly unaccountable Apostasie I quickly found three very prevailing Principles utterly inconsistent with the being of a Christian Church wherewith the generality of mens minds are possest and especially those that have of late appeared the most Zealous Patriots of the Church of England No wonder then if the building be so weak and tottering when it is erected upon such false and rotten Foundations so that whilst these treacherous Principles lie at the bottom of the Work it is plainly impossible to bring it to any sure and lasting settlement And t is these false and unhappy Principles that I shall now endeavour to represent and by plain reason to remove They are chiefly these three the first is that of Mr. Hobbs and his Followers that own the Church of England only because it is Establisht by the Law of England and allow no Authority either to that or any other Religion than as it is injoined by the Sovereign Power Though a Religion
confessed one first Mover that is a first and an Eternal Cause of all things which is that which men mean by the name of God Could any man think it possible that both these Demonstrations should drop from the Pen of the same infallible Philosopher or that the man that can demonstrate after this rate should be so confident as to boast of nothing lower than Mathematical Demonstration in all his Writings But though Mr. Hobbs be able to demonstrate Contradictions yet himself can hold but one side and that is always the wrong one For it is the only scope of all his Natural Philosophy to affirm I do not say to prove that there can be no other Cause or Principle in the Universe beside the meer Aggregate of Natural Causes By which Topick he plainly demonstrates there can be no such Being as a Deity For if there is either he is a Corporeal or an Incorporeal substance but an Incorporeal Substance is the same with an Incorporeal Body If Corporeal then either the world or a part of it for there can be nothing beside but it can be neither because by God is meant the Author of the World and therefore they who say the World or any part of it is God say it has no Cause and so that there is no God What Demonstration can be fuller and plainer than this that the Deity can be no Being distinct from the Universe nor the Universe itself nor any part of it and therefore is nothing But though it be demonstrable from the Nature of Things that there is no God yet he tells us the belief of a Deity is necessary upon the Authority of Revelation and out of reverence to the Publick Laws Though he has peremptorily determined that none can know the truth of a Revelation made to another but they to whom God himself has revealed it supernaturally so that no Revelation unless immediately made to my self can be of any use to me in this Enquiry And though he had not thus carefully prevented its proper efficacy yet when he comes to it we shall find him as much concerned to destroy the Grounds of believing any Revelation as here he is to take away the Proof of a Deity from the Nature of the Universe and as for his Reverence to the Publick Laws it is nothing else but his Declaration of Atheism repeted viz. that though I Thomas Hobbs have no ground to believe that there is any such Being as a Deity in the World nay though I am able to demonstrate the contrary to all the World yet for Fashion-sake and out of compliance with the Custom of my Country I care not though I say that there is one only I desire all people to do me the right as to observe that I only say so and not think me so mean a Philosopher as in good earnest to believe so And in the same manner that he has destroyed the Evidence of a Deity has he taken away the Obligation of all his Laws of Justice and Honesty by supposing such a State of Nature in which mankind being exempt from all Government may do whatever they please without the violation of any Law Which to suppose is to suppose no Deity for if there be a Deity there can be no supposition of any such State of Nature in which Mankind can be exempted from his Government And here too he demonstrates contradictions from the same Topick All men being by Nature of equal Power and therefore mutually fearing each other right reason dictates to every man to defend himself by force and hostility And yet because all other men are of equal power with himself and that state of Hostility is very unsafe and uncomfortable therefore the very same right Reason dictates to every man to seek the Friendship as much as in him lies of all men But though right Reasons Natural State of Peace be so Mathematically demonstrated yet in the supposition of its more Ancient State of War lyes the whole mystery of Mr. Hobbs his Morals and Politics which being founded upon the former supposition that there is no Governour of the World that alone for ever takes away the Obligation of all the Laws of Nature For though he afterwards in his contradictory way to himself would when men have entered into compacts bring them all under the Laws of Justice yet as he goes about to establish them he would have them bind without any Sanction that is without any power of binding For having no Obligation but by vertue of mutual Compact and this mutual Compact being entered into only for private Interest as every man for that reason may observe them so for the same Reason whenever he apprehends it beneficial to himself he is obliged as he will be true to his Fundamental Principle of Self-Interest to break them So that the Laws of Nature as he has founded them are but so many Artifices of Craft and mutual Hypocrisie whereby mankind pretend and profess faithful Obedience to the Rules of Justice and a sincere endeavour to procure the good and welfare of the Community yet every man resolves inwardly within himself that he will do neither but meerly when it tends to his private Advantage and so he can any way advance that what cares he what mischief he does either to the Private or Public Interest of all the men in the world beside An honorable account this of Mr. Hobbs his honesty But of his Notions of Natural Religion I shall not here discourse any farther finding it done more largely elsewhere and therefore I have here made this brief representation of it only that I might give at one view a complete account of the Hobbian Religion But our present business is to enquire into his Principles concerning the Church of England or rather the Christian Church the Church of England being nothing but that part of it that is planted in the Kingdom of England And here all his Notions of the Church are resolved into one Fundamental Principle that the Sovereign Power in every Common-Wealth is the sole Founder of all revealed Religion and that whatever pretences true or false may be made to Divine Revelation they can have no Obligatory Power unless they can obtain it from the Sovereign Authority and if they can then whether true or false they are of equal Force and Obligation to the Consciences of men Which is in express words to affirm that all revealed Religion is no Religion And yet he is every where so plain and peremptory in this rank assertion which concludes our Blessed Saviour a profligate Impostor that I can not but charge it as a reproach upon the Church of England that such open Blasphemy should be suffered so long to pass so freely without Censure or Punishment For having first been so impudent as to define all Religion to be nothing else than the allowance of some Public Tales from thence he proceeds in his Mathematical method to inform us that the
Christian Religion neither is nor can be of any Authority in any Common-Wealth otherwise than as it is owned and ratified by the Supream Secular Powers so that if Cromwel or any other Sovereign Prince be pleased to command his Subjects only to renounce their Saviour and their Christian Faith and declare themselves Jews or Mahumetans in that Case they are indispensably bound to Obedience in that it is not possible for the Christian or any other Law to have any binding force than what it receives from the Arbitrary Power of the Civil Magistrate And agreeable to that General Proposition the Philosopher is pleased to inform us that the whole Power of instructing the people in any Religion is derived from the Sovereign Prince That the Subjects of every Common-Wealth ought to receive every thing as the Law of God that the Civil-Laws declare to be so That by the Doctrine which the Sovereign commands to be taught we are to examine and try the Truths of those Doctrines which pretended Prophets with Miracle or without shall at any time pretend to advance That Moses made the Scripture Canonical as civil Sovereign of the Common-wealth That our Saviour gave his Apostles power to Preach and Baptise in all parts of the World supposing they were not by their own lawful Sovereign forbidden That the new Testament had not the force of Law till it received it from the Authority of Constantine the Great That the civil Magistrate has originally in himself and by vertue of his Sovereign Supremacy a power of ordaining Priests and administring Sacraments That Christian Kings are the only Pastors of the Christian Church and that the faith of all their Subjects depends only upon their Authority And he is so entirely possessed with this notion of Kingly power that he allows no other Authority to God himself And thus when he appoints the punishment of death to false Prophets because they tempt the People to revolt from the Lord their God These words he tells us to revolt from the Lord your God are equivalent to revolt from your King for they had made God their King by Pact at the foot of Mount Sinai So that had they not obliged themselves by that Covenant it had been no sin to worship other Gods i. e. it is all one in itself to worship the true and to worship false Gods which is plainly to say there is none at all And as for the worship they paid to the God of Israel it was not due to him as Sovereign of the Universe but only as their King by Pact and so is no more than what every Subject owes to his Sovereign And therefore he in express terms defines the Kingdom of God to be a civil Kingdom and to this purpose he expounds the third Commandment That they should not take the name of God in vain that is that they should not speak rashly of their King nor dispute his Right nor the Commissions of Moses and Aaron his Lieutenants And this was the end of our Saviours coming into the World to restore unto God by a new Covenant the Kingdom which being his by the old Covenant had been cut off by the Rebellion of the Israelites in the Election of Saul And the same account he gives of Christianity it self that it is only receiving our Saviour for King So that when St. Paul says to the Galatians That if himself or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel to them than he had preached let him be accursed That Gospel was that Christ was King so that all Preaching against the power of the King received in consequence to these words is by St. Paul accursed for his speech is addressed to those who by his Preaching had already received Jesus for the Christ that is to say for King of the Jews So that it seems we owe no other duty to our Saviour than if he had been only a temporal Messias seeing all that is due to him is only by vertue of that covenant whereby we receive him for our King Neither is this Kingdom of his present but is to be established upon the Earth after the general Resurrection and therefore by vertue of that Pact that the faithful make with him in Baptism they are only obliged to obey him for King whensoever he shall be pleased to take the Kingdom upon him Now barely to represent this Train of absurdities is more than enough to confute them in that they all resolve into this one gross Contradiction That for the ends of Government we are obliged to believe and obey the Christian Religion as the Law of God And for the same ends of Government we are to understand that we owe no other Obedience to it than as it is injoyn'd by the Law of man But though such manifest Trifles deserve not the civility of being confuted yet it is fit to let Mr. Hobbs his credulous Disciples and in all my Conversation I never met with a more ignorant or confident Credulity understand after what a childish rate their mighty Master of Demonstration proves these and indeed every thing else For he has but one way of proving all things First to define his own Opinion to be true and then by vertue of that Definition prove it to be so And for an undenyable proof of this we will take a review of all the foremention'd propositions where we shall find all his Mathematical Demonstrations to be nothing else but so many Positive and Dogmatical Tautologies Thus when he proves there can be no first Mover because he has already defined that nothing can move it self from whence it demonstratively follows that all motion must be Eternal for otherwise if we assert an Eternal first cause we run upon that desperate absurdity that somthing may move it self He had argued full as Mathematically that nothing can move it self because I say nothing can move it self So again when he proves that God is neither the Universe nor a part of it nor somthing beside he had argued as well had he said That there is no Being distinct from the Fabrick of the World because there is none So again those Books only can be Law in every Nation that are establisht for such by the Sovereign Authority because a Law as I have already defined it is nothing else than the Command of that man or Company of men that have the Supreme Power in every Common-wealth from whence says he it unavoidably follows that nothing can be a Law but what is Enacted by the Sovereign Power And so it would have followed as unavoidably if he had only said That the Sovereign only can make Law because the Sovereign only can make Law And yet upon this one mighty Demonstration are built all the other bold assertions that I have collected out of his Books that the Sovereign Prince is Sovereign Prophet too that he is sole Pastor to the People of his
Kingdom that he has the only Power of ordaining Priests and interpreting Scripture That Moses and Constantine by vertue of their Kingly Power made the Scriptures Canonical and all the rest which is no more than to say That there can be no Law of God because there can be no Law beside the Law of man And therefore it is needless to pursue them singly only I cannot but observe that when he makes teaching any Doctrin against the Will of the Sovereign Prince to be a certain sign of a false Prophet he has obtain'd his design of insinuating that both Moses and our Saviour were manifest Impostors in that they both proceeded contrary to the Commands of the present Powers and that is the true Account of Mr. Hobbs his Religion That though they were indeed Impostors and Rebels to the State yet having had the Fortune to gain Authority in the World and being own'd by the Laws of Christendom they ought to be acknowledged by all men as Divine Persons as they pretended to be And as his honourable notion of mankind was that notwithstanding all their pretences to Justice and Honesty they were only a pack of dissembling Knaves so his notion of a Christian Church is nothing else than an association of Atheistical Hypocrites professing Christianity but not believing it He had better have said that there is no Church at all And so when he tells us that it is lawful for a good Christian to deny his Christian Faith when his Sovereign commands him he had better have expresly said that there is no such thing as a good Christian at all For the Reason he gives that profession with the Tongue is but an outward thing and no more than any other Gesture whereby we signifie our Obedience which may be honestly done so we hold firmly in the heart the Faith of Christ this Liberty if once allowed would authorize all the Villany in the world for Perjury it self is but an external thing and will by this means become lawful so a man believe in his heart the contrary to what he says with his mouth But when to this he adds that indeed such Persons as have a calling to Preach are obliged if called to it to suffer Martyrdom for their Religion but none other no more being required of private Christians but their own Faith He little considers that by this new kind of priviledge that he out of his great kindness grants the Clergy he has contradicted his whole design For if they may lawfully persist to death in Preaching the Gospel contrary to the Commands of the civil Sovereign then the case is plain that all Subjects are not bound to profess that Religion which the Sovereign enjoyns which once granted the whole cause of Leviathan is overthrown And as by this particular kindness to the Clergy he has run himself upon a flat Contradiction to his whole Design so has he renounced his Argument against Martyrdom For when he proves that a Christian may deny his Faith because profession is but an outward Ceremony it is no more in a Clergy-man and therefore as lawful and innocent in him as in any other However they are very much obliged to him for this singular kindness and civility to them especially at that time when they enjoyed this his priviledg so highly as they did at the time of publishing his Book All the Orthodox Clergy being then treated with a more barbarous cruelty than the ancient Christians were by any of the Heathen Persecutors great numbers of them being then stinking to death in the holes and bottoms of rotten Ships And therefore when the Clergy were in that woful Condition for him so impertinently to suggest as he does immediately after That no man is required to die for every Tenet that serves their Ambition or Profit to speak very gently this was not done like a Gentleman And Mr. Hobbs could not have taken a more unseasonable time to revile the Clergy than he did For whilst they were in Prosperity indowed with good Revenues and entrusted with great Power if he had fall'n upon them then Envy might have been some ground for his Malice But at that time when they were trampled upon by the very Scum of the People ruin'd and undone he could have no other Temptation to do it but meer Hatred and Malice to the Function it self But however though it be a foolish thing for any man to die for the Ambition or Profit of the Clergy yet it was a truly noble thing both of the Clergy and others to sacrifise their Lives and Fortunes in the Cause of their lawful Prince against Rebels and Traytors And it will be an eternal blemish upon Mr. Hobbs's Name and Memory that when beside the general duty of Loyalty he had received many particular Favours and Obligations from his Prince he should not only desert him himself but should publish this Book on purpose to persuade the whole Nation that it was so far from being any way bound to adhere to their lawful Prince that they were brought under an Obligation of Allegiance and Loyalty to the then brutish Usurper whom he flattered to so high a degree of Tyranny as to advise him to require of all men not only a Submission to his brutal Power but an Approbation of all his wicked Actions a thing so infinitely vile and dishonourable that it exceeded the wickedness of the Tyrant himself Now men of these irreligious Principles are so far from being fit Members of a Christian Church that they are not worthy to live in any humane Society in that they blow up the foundations of all Government as well as Religion For Loyalty or a sense of duty to lawful Governours is founded upon no other Principle than the Obligation of Conscience towards God So that those men that set Subjects loose from that turn them loose to Rebellion And therefore though the notion of a Deity be nothing else than an empty Doublet an Hat and a crooked Stick set up by Princes to scare fools to Obedience it concerns them to keep those men out of their Fields who go about to destroy the Reverence of their Scare-crow However these men are not to be admitted to any Disputes about Church-government who will not allow any such thing as a Church when the Dispute proceeds only upon that Supposition And therefore I shall leave them to enjoy the vanity of their own Conceits and proceed to the second Adversary who grants a Church founded by Divine Right but no right of Government within it self And as in the former we have seen the power of Ignorance joyn'd with Pride and Vanity so here may we see the Impotency of Learning joyn'd with Prejudice and Passion For this learned Gentleman has spared for no pains in this Argument he has ransackt all Authors and all Languages to serve his Cause he set aside many years for composing his Work and indeed seems to have made it the main design of his Life And
whatever first engaged him to undertake the Argument and it is usually reported that the Provocation was so very slight that I cannot but think it beneath the Spirit of so great a man he has prosecuted it with greater Zeal and Keenness than he expresses in other Writings Nay he cannot forbear upon all occasions digressing into this Subject insomuch that this is the main matter of his Preface to his Book de Anno Civili the Subject whereof one would think is remote enough from this Argument And yet after all his expence of Pains and Learning he has been so far from serving the purpose of his Design that he has directly opposed it And if he had only studied to furnish the Church with Arguments to justifie her Authority and Jurisdiction he could not have done her more service than he has done by this violent Attempt upon it This I know cannot but seem a very strange Charge against a Person of his Parts and Learning but therein I say appears the strength of Prejudice and Partiality that it puts men beside the use of their Natural Understandings and hires them to set their Wits on work only to serve a Cause or gratifie a Passion And when once a man has taken up a Falshood to defend the more Skill and Learning he spends upon it the worse it is for when an Errour is but slightly maintain'd the mistake may proceed from Inadvertency but when it is asserted with great Industry and long Study that discovers the man to be under a setled and habitual misunderstanding And when all is done every thing will be True or False as it is whether we will or no. And if the Power of the Church be setled upon Divine Right 't is not all the Wit nor all the Eloquence nor all the Learning in the World that can unsettle it the Winds may blow and the Waves may beat but they can never shake it because it is founded upon a Rock For a proof hereof I shall first give a brief Account of this learned Authors method of Discourse and then secondly in the same way of arguing by which he endeavours to destroy the Original power of the Church I shall undertake to make out a demonstrative proof of its Divine Authority Only I must premise that whereas he treats only of the Power of Excommunication that Dispute must involve in it all other Acts of Government in that they are all supposed by the Power of inflicting Punishment Now Mr. Seldens Account of the rise of Excommunication is briefly this that it was never establisht in the Jewish Church by any Divine Command that there was no use of it whilst they enjoyed the Civil Power among themselves and therefore that we meet with no Footsteps of it till after the Babylonian Captivity and that then and there it was first taken up among the Jews by Confederacy and mutual Compact For being then deprived of all judicial Power and zealous for the honour of their Nation they covenanted among themselves to punish all contumacious Offenders against their Laws and Customs by Excommunication Which consisted of two things First solemn Imprecation of the Divine vengeance Secondly Separation from their Converse that partly by the fear of the Wrath of God and partly by shame and modesty they might be brought to Repentance which as it was no proper Jurisdiction so it could take no effect not only against the will of the Sovereign Power but of every refractory Offender that might if he pleased despise their Sentence and in spite of it enjoy the liberty of his own Conversation And therefore to make the Sentence appear more terrible to the People they expressed it in the same forms of Speech in which Moses expressed Capital punishments which is the thing that gave the Occasion to learned men of mistaking as if the same Phrases had signified the same thing from the beginning though the only intention of the Jews was thereby to declare that they would no more own Excommunicate persons to be Members of their Society than if they had been cut off from it by a sentence of Death and that if it were in their Power they would not spare to do it according to the Law of Moses That this sentence related only to their Civil Liberties and was no abridgment of their freedom as to publick Worship and though the Offender upon whom it passed was said to be cast out of their Synagogue yet that is to be understood as it was their Court of Judicature not their place of Worship and so signifies Civil Out-lawry not Ecclesiastical Excommunication But though this Device was at first made use of in this case of necessity for want of more effectual Government yet having once obtained the Power of custom among them when they were restored to their Country and Civil State they reserved it among their Civil Penalties and used or omitted alter'd or abated its Exercise according to discretion as is wont to be done in all other Acts of humane Judicature That this was the State and Notion of the thing in the time of our Saviour and his Apostles who took it up in imitation of the Jews and therefore expressed it by the same forms of Speech so that in their Discourses it signified no other Separation than what it did among the Jews That thus the Use of it continued till the open breach between the Jews and Christians and then the Christian Church being wholly separated from the Jewish into a Society by it self they enter'd into such a Confederacy among themselves as the Jews did in the time of their Captivity of inflicting censures upon such as by their unchristian Practices should bring scandal upon the Church That this Power at first resided in the whole Congregation not in any particular Officer and that thus it continued till the Ambition of the Bishops wrested it into their own hands and for it pretended the Authority of our Saviour's Commission And so they enjoyed it till the time of Constantine the Great who taking the Church into his Care and Government reassumed this Power to himself as a natural Right of the Sovereign Prerogative and so it descended to all his Successors in the Empire who as appears by the Records of every Age varied its Use and exercise at their own pleasure And as Princes came into the Church this Right of course Escheated to them and was accordingly challenged by them as is largely proved by the History of Europe and particularly of our own Nation This is the short Account of his long Performance the sum whereof is That Excommunication had no Divine but meerly an humane Original and that it is no Ecclesiastical but a civil Punishment and therefore that it appertains not to the Church but to the civil Magistrate Now to Answer or rather Confute all this I need only to represent That the Christian Church is a Society founded upon the immediate Charter and Command of our Saviour
whereby he has obliged all the Members of it to the open profession of the Christian Faith and to Communicate in the Sacraments and all other Ordinances of publick Worship which Society is so far from having the least Dependence upon the Civil Power that it was at first Erected not only without the Allowance but against the Edicts and Decrees of all the Powers of the Earth and subsisted so apart from all Kingdoms and Common-wealths for above 300 years all which time though it borrowed no Force or Assistance from the Imperial Laws yet by vertue of our Saviours Divine Authority it obliged all Christians to embody together into a visible Society Which Obligation is not only distinct from but antecedent to all humane Laws that require the same thing And therefore in a Christian state men are not Christians by vertue of the Law of the Common-wealth but it is the Law of God that constitutes the Being and Formality of a Christian Church Now this being granted me which cannot be denyed without denying the foundations of the Christian Faith the whole cause of Erastianism is run upon a palpable Contradiction For if the Church be a Society founded upon Divine Right it must have at least as much Power of Government within it self as is necessary to its own Peace and Preservation otherwise it is no Society much less of any Divine Appointment And if it be indued with a Power of Government it must have a Power of inflicting penalties upon Offenders because without that the common sense of mankind will tell us that all Government is ineffectual And then as it is a Society so it is no civil Society as appears by our Saviours own Declaration that his Kingdom is not of this World and by the fundamental Principle of these men that for that very reason maintain it cannot be indued with any juridical Authority From all which viz. That it is a Society but no civil Society that every Society must have Government and all Government a Power of inflicting Penalties what can more demonstratively follow than That its Penalties are distinct from those that are inflicted by the civil Power and if so that then Excommunication in the Christian Church whatever it is must be something distinct from all civil Inflictions So that methinks Mr. Hobbs his Notion is much more Coherent with it self for whilst he allows the Church no Right of Society but what is granted it by the civil Government it is but reasonable that the Power upon whose Charter it subsists should retain to it self the Authority of governing it according to the Laws and Rights of its own â—â—stitution But to derive all its Rigâ—â— of Society from God and at the same time allow it no Power of Government but from the State is that gross Contradiction I charge them with in that Society without Government is no Society So that this one Notion That the Church is a spiritual Corporation distinct from the Common-wealth and antecedent to its being embodied to it prevents and anticipates all the Erastian Arguments because that alone plainly infers that it must be endued with a jurisdiction distinct from the civil Government And indeed the main Dispute depends upon this one Principle Whether the Church be a Society founded by Divine Institution if it be that alone vests it with a Power of Excommunication if it be not it is in vain to strugle against Conclusions when we have once own'd the Premises for then are we clearly return'd back to the Church of Leviathan that stands uponno other Foundation than that of humane Laws Now upon this immoveable Principle I joyn Issue with our learned Authour and shall wait upon him through all parts of his Discourse and through all Ages of the world as he has divided them into six Epochas 1 From Adam to Moses 2 From Moses to the Captivity 3 From the Captivity to our Saviour 4 From our Saviour to the end of the first Century 5 From the end of the first Century to the Reign of Constantine 6 From Constantine to our own Age of all which he has endeavour'd severally to prove that there was either no such thing as Excommunication in Use or if there were that it was a meer humane Invention First he undertakes to prove that there was no such punishment as Consistorian Excommunication in all the interval from the Creation to Moses For whereas it is the custom of some zealous men to fetch all things from the beginning of the World they have here it seems exemplified this matter in the Fall of Lucifer from Heaven in the expulsion of Adam from Paradise and in the banishment of Cain from the Society of mankind Now in answer to these he replies two things First that these punishments were not properly Excommunication Secondly that if they were examples are not enough to make a Divine Law I will freely grant him both and yet infer from hence what is enough to my purpose The necessity of Government to the preservation of Society and of inflicting penalties to the preservation of Government When it appears from hence that even God himself who is endued with infinite Wisdom and Power has no other moral way but this to govern the world And that is all that in this part of the Dispute can be material to our present Argument for the Dispute being divided into two parts Whether there be such a punishment as Excommunication and Whether the Power of inflicting it be appropriate to certain Officers of our Saviours appointment I suppose no man ever pretended to prove that our Saviour at the beginning of the World instituted an Apostolical order of men for the government of Religion so that here all the Controversie that can be is Whether there were not an absolute necessity of some jurisdiction in this as well as all other matters of humane life and for it we have our Authour 's full suffrage proving in his first and second Chapters that the sons of Noah and the Patriarchs who lived before the Law must have had their Courts of judicature tam circa Sacra quà m Profana from the nature and end of Society in that without this Power it must unavoidably fall into disorder and confusion Utrum aurem praefecturae fuerint illis tunc temporis juridicae tametsi nulla omnino restarent earundem in sacris literis alibive vestigia non magis esset dubitandum quà m utrùm in societatem vitae civilem coalescerent tunc ipsi atque animalia ut genus humanum reliquum essent politica rectèque ac honestè pro seculi persuasione vivendi rationem omnino inirent atque ut Dubia Lites Controversiae cum effectu civili i. e. judiciorum executione dirimerentur scelera ac delicta cohiberentur adeoque in Officiis contineretur quisque suis curaret And therefore he makes all Government to be establisht by the Law of Nature as being absolutely necessary to the preservation of all humane Society Which
case ought not to have compared the Talmudical Traditions to the Digests of Justinian but to some of the old British History not to mention the Monk of Viterbo who give us large Accounts of the exploits of their Country and the succession of their Princes from Adam to Brute without any assistance of former Records And this I take to be the case of the Talmudical Doctors in whose Reports there is nothing creditable concerning the ancient Jewish Church farther than as it is confirm'd by the ancient Writers And therefore I find no reason to accommodate their forms or customs of Excommunication to the old Jews because I find no Records of them older than themselves And for this reason I suspect it to be a great mistake in Grotius and the learned men that follow him who whatever they find in the Talmudical Writers concerning Excommunication immediately apply it to some text of Scripture as if it were originally taken thence Of which though it is not much material to my purpose I shall give a brief Account The Talmudists then had their degrees of Excommunication some say three Mr. Selden says but two neither was it inflicted only by the Court of Judicature but by any single Person and that either upon another or upon himself and that either waking or sleeping For if any man pronounced himself or his neighbour Excommunicate it was as binding as the Decree of the great Sanhedrim or if he only dream't that he was Excommunicate either by the Court or any private Person it was as effectual as if it had been done with all the formalities of Law And as any man had power to Excommunicate himself so had any Rabbi to absolve himself and if a man were Excommunicate by the great Sanhedrim he might be absolved by any three men whatsoever with divers other ridiculous Formalities which discover themselves to be meer inventions of the Talmudical Age when all sense of Religion was run into idle and useless Pageantry And therefore passing by all the rest as absurd enough of it self I can find no Traces of their several degrees of Excommunication more ancient than themselves and therefore I suspect them not to have been in Use in the ancient Jewish Discipline And though Grotius interpret several texts of Scripture by them it is manifest that he brings his Interpretation along with him from the Rabinical Writers without finding any ground for it in the Text it self as will best appear by particulars Thus that Text Ezra 10. 8. That whosoever would not come within three days according to the counsel of the Princes and the Elders all his substance should be forfeited and himself separated from the Congregation of those that had been carried away seems not to have any reference to the power of Excommunication but only an exercise of that absolute Authority that Ezra had received from the Persian King Chap. 7. 26. That whosoever will not do the Law of thy God and the Law of the King let judgment be executed speedily upon him whether it be unto Death or to Banishment or to confiscation of Goods or to Imprisonment Now the Proclamation in the 10. Chap. being in pursuance of this Authority can signifie nothing but first an exclusion from the priviledges granted by Artaxerxes to the Jews which as things then stood amounted to nothing less than Banishment and then Secondly a confiscation of their Estates and because the Estates to be confiscated were to be devoted to the service of Religion the thing is expressed by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that signifies Consecration as well Destruction For whereas it properly and originally imports nothing but utter Ruin yet because in most cases where the People were design'd to final Destruction the Goods were reserved and dedicated to the service of God thence the same word came to signifie Destruction and Consecration Neither does that Text of Nehemiah sound any more to the purpose c. 13. 25. And I contended with them and cursed them c. which seem to signifie nothing more than as Grotius himself expresses it Nehemiam gravibus verbis etiam cum ir ae divinae comminatione usum in istos legirupas chiding with them severely and threatning them with the wrath of God Much less is that of Daniel to this purpose Chap. 12. 2. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt i. e. says Grotius of these latter sort erunt alij in Nidui alij in Cherem For supposing with him that this passage ought to be understood of the punishment of those who under the persecution of Antiochus had Apostatised from the worship of the true God yet there is no imaginable foundation were not mens minds prepossest with Talmudical Conceits to understand it of these forms of Excommunication especially that of Nidui which was not separation but only a keeping the distance of four paces from others was certainly a very small punishment for the greatest of sins among them i. e. Idolatry And lastly to mention no more that of St. John the 9. and 22. seems least of all to the purpose That the Jews had agreed already that if any man did confess that he was Christ he should be put out of the Synagogue Which Grotius expounds of Nidui because says he the second degree of Excommunication was not inflicted upon the followers of Jesus till after the Resurrection But it looks very uncouth that the great Sanhedrin who looked upon our Saviour as an enemy to Moses and their Religion an Impostor an Apostate a Samaritan which was much worse than an Heathen should deter the People from being seduced by him with no greater penalty than of keeping four paces distance from their Neighbours however when those that were under it were notwithstanding admitted into the Synagogue keeping their due dist ance they could not be said to be cast out of it In short when there are no footsteps of the Talmudical degrees of Excommunication neither in the Scripture nor Josephus nor in the practice of the Essenes nor in any ancient Record we have no reason to believe it was then in use but on the contrary that it was not because otherwise so obvious a thing could not have escaped their notice The truth is the plainest account we have of this thing is from the Scriptures of the New Testament as I shall shew when I come to that head particularly from their custom of casting out of the Synagogue which signifies discommoning Offenders and is commonly expressed by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by Josephus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to cashire out of the Society of which we have an eminent instance in the third Book of Maccabees where the Egyptian Jews excommunicated those that under the Tyranny of Ptolomy Philopator had sacrifised to Idols accounting them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as no better than enemies to their Nation This was the simple
false Religion which says he if he should let him be Anathema i. e. says our Authour keep him not Company a dreadful punishment to an Angel As for the second Text it is so high a Curse that all Authors are at a loss for its meaning though among all the Conjectures about the signification of Maranatha I think none more probable than that of Grotius Eâ voce oratur Deus ut quamprimum talem maleficum seductorem tollat ex hominum numero It was a casting out of the Church attended with a prayer to Almighty God to take the Offender out of the World which was rarely done and only in such cases as is here supposed when men were not only wicked but powerful Agents and Instruments of Wickedness as in the case of Julian whom the Christian Church did not only Excommunicate for his Apostasie but because beside that he set himself to destroy Christianity they prayed to God that for its preservation he would speedily remove him out of the World But whatever it signified it was something more than a meer Restraint of familiar Conversation or it was nothing at all For what punishment could it be to any man who disown'd Christianity to be deprived of the Conversation of Christians in an heathen City where the Religion was a Novelty and when their Company was so far from being desirable that it could only expose a man to contempt and scorn But however granting this slender Interpretation of these Texts what can be more absurd than that the Apostle only by vertue of a Jewish Power should Excommunicate all that opposed our Saviours Religion both when he had no such Power and when the Jews were the main enemies that opposed it And yet that is the only thing that our Author undertakes in this Chapter That there was then no Excommunication in the Christian Church but by vertue of the Jewish Authority The last instance of Apostolical Practice is St. Pauls proceeding against the incestuous Corinthian which one would think is as clear a Precedent of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction as could have been left upon Record And yet this must be rejected as a miraculous and extraordinary case and is not to be understood for the power of Excommunication but for the then Apostolical power of inflicting Diseases though nothing can be expressed in plainer words than St. Pauls commanding the Corinthians to put such an one from among them for what else can that signifie than to expel him their Society And what if any miraculous Effect followed it that was not the punishment which the Apostle injoyn'd the Corinthians to inflict upon the Offender for they were not as is agreed on all hands endued with any such Power But all that he required of them was to cast him out of their Church and therefore in his second Epistle upon the offending parties Repentance he counsels them to restore him 2 Cor. 2. And that whatever delivering to Satan may otherwise import was all the Jurisdiction they exercised as gather'd together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles Spirit and if any extraordinary inflictions ensued upon this sentence that was only a Divine Ratification of the Churches decree But when upon this occasion the Apostle enjoyns the Corinthians not to accompany no not so much as to eat with scandalous Offenders that says our Author signifies no more than Davids saying Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked And I have not sat with vain persons neither will I go with dissemblers this brought no alteration upon the state of Offenders but only signifies the Resolution of particular men as to their Conversation It is very true that a mans Resolution is his Resolution but then a Command too is a Command And that whatever Davids case was is the case here where St. Paul commands them in the name of the Lord Jesus and by his Apostolical Authority to expel all wicked pretenders to Christianity out of their Society And that it is plain was a manifest change of their state in the Christian Church or the same thing with Excommunication But this for the Usage as for the Right our Author will allow none but what was purely Judaical or Imperial and this he proves very largely both because at first all Christians were Jews and none else were admitted into the Church but Jewish Proselytes so that notwithstanding their Christianity they continued the same national Interest and exercised the same acts of Government of which Excommunication being one it was common both to the Believing and Unbelieving Jews That is his evidence of the Jewish Title to Excommunication his proof of the Imperial is this That the Emperors in their Edicts by which they granted or abated their Priviledges understood both Jews and Christians and therefore by vertue of their grants the Christians as well as Jews enjoyed their old power of Excommunication But to what purpose all this I must confess I cannot divine For it is true that the Christians and Jews then kept up the same National Interest but what is that to Excommunication in the Christian Church which was both distinct from that of the Jews and concern'd no civil Rights And that is our only enquiry what that Excommunication was that was peculiar to Christianity For when the Christians continued among the Jews as to their civil Society the question is that seeing notwithstanding that they exercised this power among themselves as Christians whether that must not be distinct from the same Act as exercised among them as Jews For as our Author informs us they were Jews to all intents and purposes Nisi exceptis rebus illis quibus à Judaeis non credentibus necessariò atque è disciplinâ Christianâ singulari divinitus praescriptâ discriminarentur that is to say they were Jews to all intents and purposes but of Christianity Upon such preposterous absurdities are men forced when they will right or wrong maintain their own Prejudices We are at great pains to prove that the Christians had no discipline by Divine Right and that what they had they had in common with the Jews and now after all we except only that which was peculiar to the Christians and that too instituted by Divine Right And thus I find that our Author is forced every where upon this Argument to contradict his Assertion in a Parenthesis Thus Chap. 13. p. 494. Quidnam ibi quo minus tum regimen circa tam sacra Christiana quà m prophana publicum tum ipsa excommunicatio ut ante causis tantum aliquot novis pro persuasionis discrimine introductis utpote inter mores Judaicos illibata undiquaque ab illis exerceri nec aliter debuisset Our whole design is to prove that there was no Excommunication among the primitive Christians but that of the Jews nor none among the Jews but what was purely civil and now at last we except in a Parenthesis as it were by the by
against the Government For if the Church have no right of exercising any Discipline within it self but by the grant of the Empire then the grant of the Empire being reversed it has none at all And thus has he fairly brought this confederate Discipline of the primitive Church which he has contrived purely to avoid any Government founded upon Divine Right into down-right Rebellion And no wonder when all Confederacies against the Commands of the Sovereign Power can be no better unless when warranted by Divine Authority And now it is no wonder if after these Premises our Author begins his next Chapter with a Confession that it does not appear when the present form of Excommunication began in the Christian Church Quandonam primo discrepantia ejusmodi inter Christianae Judaicae seu vetustioris Excommunicationis effectus inciperet non quidem satis liquet Sed ante Origenis ac Tertulliani etiam Irenaei tempora juxta jam dicta effectum quoad Sacrorum communicatinis negationem inolevisse non dubitandum Though I should have thought it a sufficient proof that it descended from the Apostles when we find it in the Church immediately after them and find no beginning of its Institution especially when it could have no other because the Apostles challenging no Civil Authority they could have no other power but a cutting off from the Spiritual Priviledges of the Christian Church And here I cannot but remark it as the peculiar disingenuity of all the Adversaries both of the Government and Governours of the Church i. e. Excommunication and Episcopacy that they will allow their usage in all Ages of the Church but only that of the Apostles and because they imagine that in their time there are no demonstrative evidences of their Practice for that reason destroy their Reverence and neglect their Authority whereas had these men the common modesty of Mankind they would revere them for their so ancient and Catholick Practice and when with all their search they cannot discover any later beginning of them they would conclude it at least a very fair probability that they descended from Apostolical Prescription And in our present case one would wonder that when our Author has traced this usage both in the Eastern and Western Churches into the Age immediately after the Apostles without being able to discover any other time of its first Institution how any man should doubt of its Apostolical Antiquity What Records can be more evident than the Canons of the Apostles the Writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian that lived in the first Century after them and St. Cyprian in the second who do not only mention this Power of the Church as a thing then in common use but speak of it as an ancient Right derived from their Ancestors I shall give one Instance for all because our Author has the boldness to quote it and yet to overlook the Consequence and that is out of Irenaeus who expostulating with Victor Bishop of Rome about his rash Excommunication of the Asiatick Churches thus bespeaks him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never were any men Excommunicated after this rate Upon which our learned Author observes Excommunicationis usus qualiscunque ut ab anterioribus seculis illuc propagatus utrinque pariter tunc admittitur from hence it appears that on all sides the use of Excommunication was admitted as descending from the foregoing Ages after this could any man think it possible that when he had allowed this Testimony of Irenaeus who by his own computation flourished about Seventy years after St. John that he should ever doubt of its being an Apostolical practice Or could any man desire to reduce his Adversary to a greater absurdity than is here so frankly own'd that Irenaeus who lived in the age immediately after the Apostles should speak of this thing as the custom of former ages and yet that there should be no such custom in the Apostolical age And of the same nature is his discourse of the time when this power was first appropriated to the Christian Bishops which he confesses to be altogether unknown though he finds it in common use in the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian and that is time enough to give it right to Apostolick prescription especially when he does not so much as pretend to any Record that the Keys were ever in the Peoples hands Neither has he any ground for this Imagination but only his old conceit that among the Jews every man had this power and therefore among the Christians Whereas there is not the least ground of surmise that there was any such custom among the ancient Jews but that it was a meer off-spring of the Talmudical folly Or if there were yet it was too foolish to be admitted into the serious discipline of the Christian Church for of what use could it be when any man might Excommunicate whom he pleased and when he might be absolved from the heaviest sentence of the Court by any three persons that he could pack together such ridiculous trifling is at first view too absurd to be entertain'd in the Christian Church And as it does not appear that the People ever exercised this power de facto so neither does it that they could ever chalenge it de jure in that we do not find that our Saviour ever vested the Body of Believers in any Power of governing his Church but on the contrary that when ever he gives out his Commissions he ever addresses himself to particular Persons And thus are we faln upon the main Controversie where we ought to have begun and where we might have ended but he that pursues an Adversary must follow his motion otherwise certainly the matter of right ought to have been determin'd before the matter of Fact and therefore the first question ought not to have been whether the primitive Christians exercised any such Jurisdiction but whether they received any Commission from our Saviour for their Authority which if either proved or disproved would prevent the following dispute concerning the practice of the Church but seeing our Author is pleased to take this method we shall tread in his steps and thus he brings it in that when the Bishops had unwarrantably assumed this Power to themselves they justified their usurpation by pretended Patents made to themselves in several Texts of Scripture as the Power of the Keys and of binding and loosing and if any man hear not the Church let him be unto thee as an Heathen and a Publican And now to elude the true meaning of these and the like passages what infinite pains has been taken by our Author and other learned men I need not represent but whatever shifts men may invent their true meaning discovers and clears it self by this one plain and obvious consideration viz. That our Saviour had already set up his Kingdom or Society of his Church upon which supposition all these grants can signifie nothing less than a donation of Power Thus when he chooses Officers
under him and gives the Keys of his Kingdom into their hands what can that possibly signifie but their Power of Government in and over the Society especially when it was so familiar a thing in Scripture to express power by Keys and our Author himself has observed it and proved it by a multitude of Instances But then says he this Power of opening and shutting the Kingdom of Heaven is exercised by preaching the Doctrine of the Gospel by administring the Sacraments by admitting fit Persons into it by Baptism and by not admitting such as are unfit and by retaining such as are already admitted That is to say our Author will allow the Governors of the Church all other Acts of Jurisdiction but only this one of Excommunication notwithstanding that it is evidently implyed in them all Thus if the Governours of the Church be entrusted with a Power of Judging what Persons are fit to be admitted then certainly if they perform not those conditions upon which alone they are admitted it must be in the Power of those who let them in to turn them out So plainly does the Power of Baptism infer that of Excommunication and the Power of judging who are fit members of the Church infer both So that the Gentlemen of the Erastian persuasion would have been much more consistent with themselves when they would not give the Church all the Acts of Power if they would have given it none at all for they are inseparable And therefore the learned and pious Mr. Thorndike has very judiciously observed that the Leviathan has done like a Philosopher in making the question general that is general indeed though by so freely and generously declaring himself he has made his Resolution more subject to be contradicted But yet they that only dispute the Power of Excommunication as they are of the same opinion so are they pressed with greater difficulty only they express not so much of their meaning for they are nevertheless to give an account what Right the secular Power can have to appoint the Persons that shall either determine or execute matters of Religion to decide controversies of Faith to administer the Sacraments than if they resolved and maintain'd all this as expresly as the Leviathan hath done And in the same manner does the following Text explain it self If he hear not the Church let him be to thee as an Heathen and a Publican if we will observe upon what subject our Saviour was then discoursing for though our Author to make the matter appear the more ambiguous has given us a large Critical account of the words that signifie Church in all Languages if instead of that he had only minded our Saviour's Discourse he must have seen that by the Church here could be understood nothing but the Christian Church this being one of the Laws whereby he would have the Subjects of his Kingdom to be govern'd But our Author tells us that the Notion of the Christian Church was not then understood it being a thing to come and it is not likely that our Saviour in a matter of familiar and daily use should direct them to such a means as no mortal man could possibly understand To which it is very easie to answer that all our Saviour's Discourses procede upon the supposition of the being of his Church He began at preaching the Kingdom of Heaven and all his Sermons and Instructions after that are but so many Laws and Institutions for its Government and therefore our Saviour's Words are so far from being doubtful or obscure that they were not capable of being applied to any other Society than that which he was now establishing in the World And whatsoever was the vulgar meaning of the word Ecclesia yet when used by our Saviour it can be applied to no other company of men but that of his Church and it was so far from being then a new word or a new notion to the Apostles that our Saviour had sometime before used the same Expression to St. Peter Upon this Rock I will build my Church which he promised him as a peculiar reward of his forward Faith Now it cannot be supposed that our Saviour would make his promises to his Friends and Servants in unintelligible Language and therefore it must be supposed that the Notion of the Christian Church was an intelligible thing But if this will not do our Author proceeds that this Text gives no jurisdiction to the Church but only directs private Christians how they shall behave themselves toward Offenders as if the Emperour should have made an Edict that if any Subject should not submit to the decree of his Prefect he should be accounted by his fellow Subjects as no member of the Common-wealth this gives the Prefect no new Power but only concerns the opinion of the People Very true but it supposes his old Power and so if our Saviour had antecedently vested his Church with this Power this was no new grant but only a supposition of a former one if he had not then this was their Patent when he refers his Subjects to their Judicature But whatever may be the Notion of the Church what is there says our Author in the following words Let him be to thee as an Heathen and a Publican that sounds like Excommunication either in the Jewish or Christian use of it Nothing at all in the Jewish for Heathens were never Excommunicate as having never been of the Society neither were Publicans put out of the Synagogue upon the account of their being Publicans But though Heathens were not Excommunicate Persons yet Excommunicate Persons were as Heathens and that is so plainly the meaning of the words that nothing but meer peevishness could have made the exception and it is the same as if our Saviour should have said of an Apostate let him be unto thee as an Infidel and our Author should have replied upon him How can that be When an Infidel is one that was never a Member of the Church and an Apostate once was And then as for the Publicans though they durst not at that time Excommunicate them for that reason for fear of the Romans yet it is notorious that they thought them worthy of it and that they were esteem'd as no better than scandalous Sinners Heathens and Idolaters But this supposed too it is no act says he of the Church but every private man who was hereby permitted to treat the Offender as a vile Person But this act of his supposes the power of Judicature in the Church for this advice relates to the known power of the Sanhedrin that were wont to Excommunicate refractory Offenders and thereby to put them into the state of Heathen Men And such it seems was to be the Authority of the Apostles who were the great Sanhedrin in the Christian Church as appears by the plain design of our Saviour's discourse when he refers all Christians to their Judicature and commands them that if any man be
obstinate against their Authority every man should look upon him as an Excommunicate Person and by the sentence of the Court reduced into the state of Idolaters But also by the words immediately following Whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven Which words plainly declare a Power of binding in the sentence of the Church and withall who the Church is viz. The Apostles or Governours of it to whom our Saviour addresses his speech and vests them and them alone with that Authority in which he had before enstated St. Peter and promises to ratifie not the opinion of the People but their acts of Judicature when the People appeal to their Authority But neither Secondly says our Author can these words relate to the Christian Excommunication for what punishment could there then be in being accounted of as an Heathen when a great number of the primitive Christians were Heathens or such as came into the Church without Circumcision What in our Saviours time did you not take a great deal of pains in the foregoing Chapter to prove not only that then but during all the time of the Apostles all Christians were Jews but now it will serve your turn the greatest part of them were Heathens But not to insist too much upon such weak pretences it is certain that in our Saviours time all that were not Jews by Circumcision were esteemed as Heathens i. e. Idolaters and vile Persons not fit to be admitted into their Church or Common-wealth and therefore it can be of no other Import in the Christian Church Our Saviour here accommodating as he does every where the known customs of the Synagogue to the Constitution of his Church so that considering the vulgar manner of speaking at that time I cannot understand if our Saviour had design'd to establish this Power in what other words he could have expressed himself with more plainness and less ambiguity even to the capacities of the People Of the Third Text Math. 18. 18. Whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth c. Though it is answer'd already as appertaining to the second our Authors account is briefly this that the words of binding and loosing are either to be taken in their large sense of all manner of binding but then it seems very strange to express one act of it by such comprehensive words and it is like describing the Ocean by a drop of Water or the Universe by an Atom Or if they are taken in the peculiar sense of the Jewish Writers they then do not signifie any Jurisdiction but only declaring what is lawful what not or answering cases of Conscience To which I answer that in whatever sense the words are taken they will include in them the power of Excommunication In the larger sense they signifie Jurisdiction and all the parts branches and appendages of it and then the Power of inflicting penalties which as is well known and our Author has often observed gives force to all the rest is to be understood in the first place And therefore he might have spared his wonder that so large a word should be taken in so narrow a sense when that narrow sense necessarily infers all other things that it does or can signifie But however to prevent this vain objection for the time to come these words are not insisted upon as limited meerly to Excommunication but as a general donation of Power and therefore of this in particular which is so considerable a branch of it And that is it which we assert that seeing by the Power of the Keys the Scripture so often expresses greatness of Power therefore the Power that is exercised by vertue of them must carry with it the full force of obligation So that the words mutually explain each other for if by the Keys given in the Sixteenth verse is signified Authority then by binding and loosing by which the acts of them are expressed in the Eighteenth verse must be understood authoritative obligation for though the word binding simply put may not infer Authority yet binding by the Keys signifies the same thing as binding by Authority And this would have prevented our Authors other notion of which some learned men are so very fond of binding only by answering cases of Conscience because though binding alone may signifie only so much yet binding by the Keys must signifie more But it is notorious that the word it self no where in the old Testament signifies any other binding than by Legislative or judicial Obligation and whereas it is pretended that in the Talmudical Writers it signifies only an interpreting of Laws without jurisdiction it is so palpable a mistake that in them it can signifie nothing less than authoritative Obligation when it is so evident that their Rabbies equal'd their interpretations to the Law it self and bound them upon the Consciences of men by vertue of the Divine Authority and under penalty of the Divine displeasure But however if our Saviour constituted his Apostles to be only Doctors and Casuists yet he has annexed Authority to their Office by the promise made at their Instalment that whatever they bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven for I am sure all binding there is Obligatory so that it seems if they are Casuists they are authoritative Casuists and that is the same thing as if they were endued with proper Jurisdiction And now having as I suppose sufficiently vindicated these Texts I cannot but remark it as some defect of Ingenuity in this learned Gentleman to have wholly omitted one Text more which he could not be ignorant to have been as commonly as any of the other insisted upon in this Argument and if he would have taken notice of it would have prevented his Evasions And that is St. John Chap. 20. v. 21 22 23. As my Father hath sent me even so send I you And when he had said this â—e breathed on them and saith unto them receive ye the Holy Ghost whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them and whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained Here our Saviour gives his Apostles the same Power that he had received from his Father and then for the discharge of it the same Ability wherewith himself acted and lastly declares to them wherein lay the Exercise of it and what were the Effects of it forgiving and retaining of Sins which answers to the power of Binding and Loosing in the other Gospel And this if attended to would have prevented that poor slender Notion that the power of Binding and Loosing signifies only the Office of Interpreting or declaring what is lawful what unlawful for to retain or remit Sins as the truly pious and learned Dr. Hammond observes will not be to declare one mans sins unlawful anothers lawful which it must do if this interpretation be applied to this place After all this it will be but superfluous industry to spend pains upon our Author's Conceit wherewith he concludes this Chapter viz. That the Authority of the Church
arises from meer consent or voluntary confederacy for beside as I have shewn that all such Confederacies are upon his principles downright Rebellion it is manifest that if our Saviour appointed Officers over his Church and vested them with a power of Government that then he has brought all the members of it under an Obligation to submit to their Authority antecedent to their own consents But though we had no such clear evidence of this Divine Institution yet I am sure we have not the least footsteps in Antiquity of this confederate Discipline He tells us indeed of Compacts and Covenants that the Primitive Christians are said to have made among themselves but he could have told us too that these Compacts were nothing else but the celebration of the Eucharist at which they were wont as all devout men do to renew their vows and resolutions of Obedience to the Laws of their Religion And this Confederacy we all know is founded upon a Divine Institution and not only this but all other Assemblies for the publick Worship of God To which all Christians are bound by an Obligation higher than meerly their own consent and such a Confederation we grant the Church still to be a company of men Covenanting among themselves to worship God according to the Ordinances and obey him according to the Laws of the Gospel But then they are bound by the Command of God both to take this Covenant and to keep it And this is all the confederacy I know of unless we must believe Celsus his Calumnies for he too is quoted upon this occasion in the Primitive Church so that whereas our Author every where compares the confederate discipline of the Christians with that of the Jews in their dispersions it is manifest that the Jews had no other engagement beside their own mutual consent whereas the Christians were particularly obliged to enter into their Confederacy by God himself and this difference is so manifest that I shall say no more of it And now having thus firmly establisht the Churches Power upon Divine Right that supersedes all farther enquiry into the practice of after-Ages For in matters that are determined by Law all Presidents are either nothing to the purpose or to no purpose if they are against the Command they are nothing to the purpose being only so many Violations of the Law If they are for it they are to no purpose because they derive all their goodness and authority from the Law it self and therefore can give it none Thus if the power of Excommunication be founded upon the Command of God the contrary practice of all the Princes in Christendom is of no weight against the Word of God if it be not the practice of all the Churches in the World can never establish a Divine Command So that the controversie concerning matters of fact from the Reign of Constantine to our own Times the matter of Law being already clear'd from our Saviour's Time carries in it more of Ostentation than Usefulness But because our Author has been pleased to prosecute it so largely and with so much learning and confidence we are obliged to follow him especially when it is so notorious even from his own relations that the whole practice of Christendom unless perhaps in some enormities of the worst and most barbarous Times runs directly cross to his design First then he presents us with many Instances out of the Imperial Law whereby the Emperors exercised this Authority themselves but to all this himself immediately gives a sufficient Answer without making any Reply viz. That such Excommunications were meerly declaratory whereby they only declared their detestation of such Persons or Doctrines or rather declared their assent to the Sentence already denounced by the Church for I do not find that they ever made any new Ecclesiastical Laws of their own but only adopted the Canons of Councils into the Laws of the Empire and added to the Anathema's of the Church what civil Penalties they deem'd most sutable to the Offence The Theodosian Code is an excellent collection of the Constitutions of sixteen Emperours ab Anno Dom. 312. or the first Year of Constantines Conversion ad Annum 438. when it was compiled by the command of Theodosius junior in all which I think I may safely challenge any man to assign one Law relating to Religion that was not antecedently determin'd by some Council Almost all the Laws of this nature are contain'd in the 16th Book under their several Titles De fide de haereticis de apostatis c. in all which whoever will be pleased to peruse them he will find that the several Emperors enacted nothing but meerly in pursuance of Ecclesiastical Canons adding for the most part to Excommunication in the Church the punishment of Outlawry in the State Thus for example Theodosius the Great in that famous Ecclesiastical Edict published by him in the second year of his Reign and the first of his Baptism and therefore stiled by the Interpreters of the Justinian Code filiam primogenitam only established the Nicene Faith Ut secundum Apostolicam disciplinam evangelicamque doctrinam Patris Filii Spiritus Sancti unam deitatem sub parili Majestate sub piâ Trinitate credamus And when the Year after he published another Edict to the same purpose he vouches his Law by the Authority of the Nicene Council as may be seen Tit. 5. de Haereticis Leg. 6. So that his design was not to make any new Law but only to abet an ancient Law of the Church with a civil Penalty as he concludes his Edict that Offenders against it should not only be obnoxious to the Divine Veneance denounced by the Council but should also be punished at the Emperors pleasure for that I suppose to be the meaning of Motûs nostri ultione plectendos But the most express Ratification of the Canons of the Church is that Edict of Theodosius the Younger to the Governour of the Eastern Illyricum Anno Domini 421. Omni innovatione cessante vetustatem Canones pristinos Ecclesiasticos qui nunc usque tenuerunt per omnes Illyrici Provincias servari praecipimus Tum si quid dubietatis emerserit id oporteat non absque scientiâ viri reverendissimi sacrosanctae legis Antistitis urbis Constantinopolitanae quae Romae veteris praerogativâ laetatur conventui sacerdotali sanctoque judicio reservari 'T is not material whether this Law refer to the Canons of the General Councils or to the particular Canons of that Province which is a Dispute among learned men For be it this or that it is manifest that the Emperor design'd to follow the Decrees of the Church and to refer Ecclesiastical Controversies to its own judgment and determination Having intimated this account of the Theodosian Code I need add nothing of the Justinian because it only repeats all the Laws of the former that were not obsolete as may be seen not only by comparing the Books themselves but
by that exact collation of their Titles and Constitutions that is prefixed to Gothofred's Edition of the Theodosian Code And as for his own Novels he frequently makes particular reference to the Canons of the Church challenging to himself a power of punishing Offences against the Ecclesiastical Canons by vertue of this one general Law which he declares to have been the sense of himself and his Predecessors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Canons of the Church ought to have the force of Laws And accordingly he begins his Laws concerning Ecclesiastical matters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We enact that the Canons of the Church i. e. the four first general Councils shall be received into the number of our Laws And by that Edict alone if there had been no other they were all Constituted Laws of the Empire And according to this Principle he declares in the Preface to his 83 Novel that he only follows the ancient Canons and Constitutions of the Church And particularly in his 137 Novel where he endeavours the restitution of Ecclesiastical Discipline he only enjoyns the observation of the thirty sixth Apostolical Canon viz. That the Bishops of each Province meet twice a Year for the more effectual Government of the Church and this he professes to do not as Author but as Protector of the Ecclesiastical Laws and therefore in the Preface to this Novel he challenges to himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the power of Legislation in reference to the Civil Laws but in reference to the Laws of the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the power of Patronage or Protection This seems to have been the Constitution of the Church in those happiest and most flourishing Ages of it whereby it appears that the Emperours of those Times were so far from assuming the power of Excommunication to themselves that they would not so much as abet any matter of Religion with their civil Sanctions that was not determin'd beforehand by the Spiritual Power Whether they ever exceeded their own bounds I think not my self obliged to enquire they being lyable to that as well as to other mistakes and misearriages of Govenment Though I remember not any instances of that kind till the latter and degenerate ages of Christendom when barbarity was introduced by the incursions of the Goths and Vandals and other salvage Nations It is enough to my purpose that the Power of the Keys in the Church was acknowledged by the Christian Emperours from Constantine to Justinian and it is more than enough in that whether they own'd it or not it was setled by our Saviour upon the Apostles and their Successors to the end of the World But secondly Emperours Kings and Princes have limited the Ecclesiastical Order in the exercise of this Power and assign'd them either larger or narrower bounds of Jurisdiction as they judged most consistent with reasons of State by which they evidently declare what was their opinion of the censures of the Church for if they had supposed Church-officers to have acted by a Divine Authority they durst never have presumed to set bounds to the Power of God by their own arbitrary Decrees As if it were not possible for the Governours of the Church to go beyond their Commission and under pretence of a Divine Authority encroach upon that power that God has committed to Princes Which if they can do and some have done what affront is it to the Authority of God himself to restrain his Ministers within those bounds of Jurisdiction that he has prescribed to them Nay is not this very thing a very plain confession of a distinct Authority when to limit a power supposes it So that it is so far from being any Argument of their disowning the Divine Institution of an Ecclesiastical power that 't is a demonstrative and undoubted proof of their acknowledgment of it This being granted I shall not concern my self to enquire into the warrantableness of the several Precedents alledged though most of them relate only to the restraint of dilatory vexatious and uncanonical proceedings for my only business is to gain the suffrage of the Princes of Christendom to my Cause for which I am no ways bound to prove them free from all errours and miscarriages of Government so that if they might at any time bear too hard upon the power of the Church especially when the Church has given them too much reason so to do that is so far from being any prescription against its due exercise that it is a declaration of these Princes that have been most unkind to it that they own its Power provided it be kept within its due bounds But what the general sense of Christendom has been concerning the distinction of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Powers sufficiently appears by those great differences that have been raised about the bounds of their Jurisdiction And though the Christian Emperours have of later times been forced from time to time to struggle against the encroachments of the Bishops of Rome yet they never question'd that I know of the divine Right of their Episcopal Authority And therefore neither here shall I concern my self to examine the particular precedents pleaded by both Parties for the advancement of their respective Powers when it is certain that both Powers may and often have exceeded their just limits which yet is such an inconvenience that considering the passions and partialities of men is utterly unavoidable And we cannot expect that God should give such Laws as that it should not be in the Power of humane liberty to break them for then the Laws were given to no purpose it is enough that they are sufficient to guide those that will resign themselves to be govern'd with honesty and integrity and it is not in the power of Laws to effect more So that it is a very frivolous objection much insisted upon by some ill-minded men that seeing the competition of these two Powers has been occasion of creating so many mischiefs and inconveniences to Christendom it were better that one of them were removed which beside the bold way of arguing that because they think in their great wisdoms that God ought not that therefore he has not constituted two distinct Powers it is such an Objection that no constitution can possibly avoid for which way soever the Government of the World may be setled there is no remedy but that through the corruption and folly of mankind it may and often will be liable to abuses And particularly in this case there is no difficulty in discerning the bounds that God has set to these two Powers if men would be honest and upright and if they will not it is no fault of the Law that they will break it For Christianity is wholly founded upon the Doctrin of the Cross which obliges them in all cases either to obey or to suffer peaceably So that how great soever the Authority of Churchmen may be there is no danger of its interfering with or entrenching upon
the Prerogatives of Princes unless they misuse it and if they do as they go beyond their Commission so they deserve their punishment in this lâ—fe among the worst of Rebels and Traytors and are sure to have it in the next For as their Power is not only purely spiritual void of all temporal force and coercion so are they in the first place and above all things forbidden to use any violence or raise any disturbance against Government So that if any Prince think good to oppose them in the Execution of their Office and to punish them for so doing they are not to oppose him but only to sacrifice their lives in justification of their cause and submission to his will and for so doing they shall have their Reward But if they shall make use of any other Weapons whatsoever beside Prayers and Tears and Sufferings they then suffer deservedly as disturbers of the publick Peace And so much the more in that they have been so expresly forewarned by our Saviour that whosoever shall draw the Sword in his cause shall be sure to perish by it And as upon this principle he founded his Church so upon it his Apostles built it when in pure obedience to his command they preached the Gospel all the World over And if any Prince were pleased to countermand them they did not plead any exemption from the Government much less did they Libel it but only represented the Innocence and Justice of their Cause and if he were not satisfied declared their readiness to submit to his pleasure and the penalty of the Law And in this they enjoyed no other exemption from the Prerogative of Princes than what is or ought to be chalenged by every private Christian who is indispensably bound to make profession of his Christian Faith and if the Laws of his Country so require to seal it with his Blood This was the constitution of the Church and the practice of it in its first profession and is the constitution of the Church of England in its Reformation For whereas a foreign Italian Bishop had for a long time usurped wel-nigh all both secular and spiritual Power into his own hands and by an exorbitant abuse of it had enslaved the Prince and empoverished the people only to enrich himself and his own Courtiers they that were concern'd after long patience and much provocation at last resolved upon what motives concerns not us to resume their Rights The King that Power which was exercised by the Kings of Judah of old and by Christian Kings and Emperours in the primitive Church And the Bishops that Power wherewith they were as immediately entrusted by virtue of our Saviours general commission to the Apostolical Order as any other foreign Bishop or Bishops within their respective Diocesses whatsoever And to prevent all jealousie in the Prince lest they should play him the same game that his Holiness had done who in ordinc ad spiritualia had finely stript him of almost all his Temporal Jurisdiction by excepting all Ecclesiastical both Persons and Causes from his cognizance They therefore freelv declare him Supreme Governour first Over all Persons so that no Ecclesiastical Subject might as formerly appeal from his Tribunal And in all Causes so that every Subject whatsoever was bound to submit to his Decrees and Determinations so far forth as either to obey his Laws as long as he own'd and protected true Christianity as the Christian Bishops of old did to the Christian Emperours Or if he opposed it chearfully and peaceably to submit to their Penalties as they did to the Roman Persecutors And whereas from the Precedent of the Apostles in the first Council at Jerusalem the Governours of the Church in all Ages enjoyed a power of making Canons and Constitutions for Discipline and good Order yet by the example of the Primitive Church they submitted the exercise thereof to his sovereign Authority protesting in verbo sacerdotis as it is stated in that famous Act called The Submission of the Clergy That they will never from henceforth presume to attempt alledg claim or put in ure enact promulge or execute any new Canons Constitutions Ordinances provincial or other or by whatsoever other name they shall be call'd in the Convocation unless the King 's most royal Assent and License may to them be had to make promulge and execute the same and that his Majesty do give his Royal Assent and Authority in that behalf Whereby they do not pass away their power of making Ecclesiastical Canons but only give security to the Government that under that pretence they would not attempt any thing tending to the disturbance of the Kingdom or injurious to the Prerogative of the Crown Which in truth is such a submission as all the Clergy in the World ought in duty to make to their Sovereign at least in gratitude for his Protection and that without any abatement or diminution of their own Authority viz. The standing Laws of Christianity being secured to submit all other Matters to his sovereign Will and Pleasure Whereby as they would bring no damage to the Church in that this power is exercised meerly in matters of Order and Discipline if the Prince did not approve of their Constitutions it would be no difficult thing to provide for Decency some other way so they would bring great security to the State when the Prince was assured that under that pretence they would not as the Roman Clergy had done distuâ—b or undermine his Authority And as they parted not with their Spiritual Legiâ—lative Power so not with any other Power proper to their Function as the Power of preaching the Christian Religion administring the holy Sacraments and conferring holy Orders Neither did any Prince in the least ever claim or exercise any of them And because the Romanists in the beginning of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth made a mighty noise with this Objection as if by virtue of her Supremacy her Majesty had challenged a Spiritual or Ministerial Power in the Church the Queen has with great indignation disown'd any such Power and defied the Calumny And yet when she had made her disclaimour of any Spiritual Power in the Church she parted not with her Royal Supremacy over those that had it as we are particularly instructed by our Church in her 37th Article Where we attribute to the Queens Majesty the chief Government by which Title we understand the minds of some dangerous Folks to be offended we give not our Princes the ministring either of God's Word or the Sacraments the which things the Injunctions lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testifie but that only Prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself that is that they should rule all Estates and Degrees committed to their Charge by God whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal and restrain with the civil Sword the stubborn and evil doers And lastly to mention
no more whereas the witty and learned Cardinal Perron run upon the same mistake and it is a mistake that they all wilfully run upon King James in his Reply le ts him know that though Christian Kings and Emperours never arrogated to themselves a power of being Sovereign Judges in matters and controversies of Faith yet for moderation of Synods for determinations and orders establisht in Councils and for discipline of the Church they have made a good and full use of their Imperial Authority And that for this very good reason that very much concerns all Princes that they might see and judg whether any thing were done to the prejudice of their Power or the disturbance of the Commonwealth And much more to the same purpose And therefore for further satisfaction I shall refer the Reader to the excellent Discourse it self It is enough that I have given a plain and easie account of the distinct powers of Church and State and shewn that whoever denies the distinction disowns Christianity that our Saviour has vested his Church with a Power peculiar to it self that the Church has in all Ages exercised it that the Christian Emperours never denied it and lastly that the Church of England and the Reformed Princes thereof have remarkably own'd it But Thirdly Constantine and his Successors took upon them the Title of Pontifex Maximus to which according to the Constitution of the Roman Empire appertain'd the supreme Ecclesiastical Jurisdâ—ction By virtue of which Authority they granted to the Church among other Priviledges this power of Excommunication in the same manner as Claudius and other Heathen Emperours gave leave both to Jews and Christians to govern themselves by their own Laws and Customs And though the Emperour Gratian refused to wear the Pontifical Habit as a piece of Pagan Superstition yet it no where appears that he refused the Dignity it self And this Discourse our Author prosecutes with much Zeal and Learning But what do these men make of the Christian Church or rather of Christ himself that he should make no other provision for its Government than to leave it wholly to the superintendency of Heathen Priests This is such a wild conceit in it self that I must confess I could never have imagin'd any learned man could ever have made use of it against the Constitution of the Christian Church And yet this learned Gentleman is not only serious but vehement and confident in it he urges it over and over and though he repeats every thing that he says so that indeed one half of his Discourse is nothing but a Repetition of the other yet here he doubles his Repetitions and every where lays this Principle as the foundation of the practice of all After times But can any man believe that Constantine the Great took upon him the power of Government in the Christian Church if he really believed in Christ himself by virtue of a Power derived from the Usurpation of Julius Caesar Or that he could imagine that the Heathenish Priestly Power belong'd to him after his owning Christianity when by that the whole frame of the old Roman Religion was declared to be Idolatrous so that the Roman High Priest was nothing better than the supreme Head of Idolatry An Honour certainly which no Christian Emperour would be very fond of astuming to himself Julian indeed challenged both the Title and the Dignity as the greatest Ornament of his Imperial Crown but the Reason was because he was so vainly fond of the Pagan Religon But how any man of common sense that had renounced Paganism should yet own himself High Priest by virtue of that Religion that he had renounced seems too great a Contradiction for any man of common sense to believe But what if they accepted of the Title as our Author very well knows they did of Divinity it self or rather what if it were customarily given to them by others For I met with no other Monuments of it but some old Complemental Inscriptions so that it being a customary Title of Honour it might easily for a time pass in the crowd of the other Imperial Titles For it seems it continued not long being rejected by Gratian who lived about fifty Years after the Conversion of Constantine And though our learned Author affirms that the pious Emperour only refused the Vestment but not the Dignity it is very obvious to any man of much less understanding than himself that the Emperour could have no reason to refuse one but for the sake of the other for the Case is plain that there was no superstition in the Vestment but only upon the account of the Office and for that reason there was little if any use of the Title afterwards But lastly the Power of Judicature was first granted to the Bishops by the favour of the Christian Emperours and especially by an Edict of Constantine the Great whereby he grants the Bishops a full Power of hearing and determining all causes Civil as well as Ecclesiastical and withal declares their Decrees to be more firm and binding than the sentence of any other Judicature and from this great indulgence of the Emperour it is not to be doubted but that among other forensique penalties they made use of Excommunication Of the inference I shall give an account by and by but as for the Edict it self if it could do any service to our Authors design it at last proves supposititious as is fully proved by Gothofred in his excellent Edition of the Theodosian Code his reasons are too many to be here recited I will give but one for all viz. That this Law is contrary to all the Laws of the Roman Empire for though several Emperours do in their several Novels give the Bishops Power to decide causes by way of Arbitration or the consent of both parties which Power they enlarged or contracted as they pleased and to this all the other precedents produced by our Author relate yet that one party should have liberty of appeal from the civil Court at any time before judgment given without the consent of his Adversary is such a wild and extravagant priviledg as is inconsistent with all the rules of the Imperial Law And yet that is the only design of that Edict Quicunque itaque litem habens sive possessor sive petitor erit inter initia litis vel decursis temporum curriculis sive cum negotium peroratur sive cum jam coeperit promi sententia judicium eligit sacro-sanctae legis Antistitis ilico sine aliqua dubitatione etiamsi alia pars refragatur ad Episcopum cum sermone litigantium dirigatur Which I say is such an absurd liberty as would utterly destroy all the Power of the civil Magistrate if the humour or perversness of any man could so easily baulk their sentence But beside the absurdity of the Law it self there is no such Edict extant in the Justinian Code nor any mention of it in any ancient Writers of Ecclesiastical History For as for
that passage of Sozomen l. 1. c. 9. in which some learned men fancy they find some footsteps of this Law it is quite to the other purpose that I but now mentioned viz. the Bishops Power of determining causes by the mutual consent of Parties When this Edict was forged and by whom it is uncertain but it is probably conjectur'd by Gothofred from the Barbarity of its stile and great likeness of it to that of Constantines Donation to have been forged in the same Shop and by the same hand But if this Edict were as true as the rest are which give Bishops Power to sentence causes praeeunte vinculo compromissi yet where do we find any Edict for enabling them to enforce their decrees by Excommunication Not one syllable of that in all the Roman Laws but on the contrary the Civil Magistrates and their Officers are commanded to put the Bishops Sentence in execution Is it not then a very forced way of Arguing that because the Roman Emperours granted the Christian Bishops some jurisdiction they must of necessity have granted them the Power of Excommunication though there is no such Edict extant in all their Laws They conferr'd many Priviledges upon the Clergy in the Titles De Episcopis Ecclesiâ—s Clericis de Religione yet there is nothing in both the Codes and all the Novels to vest them with any power of Excommunication and therefore as those other they enjoyed by the Emperours favour not by any antecedent Right so seeing they exercised this Power and that not by vertue of any Imperial grant it is evident that they received their Authority from some other hand So that to conclude there cannot be a more pregnant Argument against our Author's opinion than the body of the Imperial Law in which there is not one Instance recorded that ever any Emperour pretended to this Power himself or granted it to his Bishops for from thence it unavoidably follows that if they had it at all they had it from some other Commission And thus am I come to the conclusion of this Argument for though there are many Precedents of latter Times yet I am not concern'd to justifie what was done by Huns Goths and Vandals whose practices were the meer effects of Ignorance and Barbarity and oblige us rather to pity than to follow their Examples PART II. HAving hitherto treated with the false Pretenders to the Church of England I come now in the last place to treat more amicably with some of its mistaken Friends and they are those that own a Government in it but without Governours allowing indeed that there ought to be some sort of Government establish'd in the Church but then they deny any particular Form of it to have been settled by Divine Right or Apostolical Constitution and leave it wholly to the choice and determination of Humane Authority So that though the Church of England happen to be at present govern'd by Bishops and though upon that account we may owe duty and subjection to them as our lawful Superiours yet they are not set over us by any Divine Commission but purely by his Majestie 's good Will and Pleasure who at his Restitution to his Kingdoms might have forborn to restore the then Abolish'd Order of Bishops and instead of that have establish'd some other Form of Government that he judged most suitable to the present state of things which if he had done that then had been the Church of England Now the Birth of this Opinion seems to have happened on this manner Mr. Calvin having founded his Geneva Platform upon Divine Institution as he particularly does in the Fourth Book of his Institutions Chap. 11. though some men that are more his Disciples than they are willing to own are pleased to deny it And in pursuance of this Decree Beza and all the other first Apostles of his Church having spent all their pains in endeavouring to make it good out of the Word of God the learned men that came after them both in the French and Dutch Churches because they must needs go beyond those that went before them proceeded to advance the Argument from Scripture to Antiquity and have with infinite industry sifted all the Writings of the Ancients to prove that there was no other Form of Government in the Church but by Presbyters in the first Ages of it next and immediately after the Apostles The chief Labourers in which Cause among many other less learned were Blondel Salmasius and Dallé who spent the greatest part both of their Life and Learning upon this Argument But they proceeding for the most part in a sceptical and destructive way not so much relying upon the Testimony as impairing the credit of Antiquity which it seems they supposed the best way to maintain their Argument this soon gave occasion to some Learned men conversant in their Writings to conclude against all pretences to the Divine or Apostolical Institution of any unalterable and perpetual Form of Church-Government whatsoever and so to think of allaying those Controversies about a Jus Divinum that had been lately and still were managed among us with so much heat and noise by leaving it as they say our Saviour and his Apostles did to the prudence of every particular Church to agree upon its own Form as it judgeth most conducing to the end of Government in that particular Church This is the state of the Question as they determine it and the Opinion is grown popular and plausible in great Vogue both among the Learned and Unlearned and is almost become the Rule and Standard of all our Ecclesiastical Polity In so much that there are many worthy Gentlemen as any one may observe in his ordinary Conversation that were stout and loyal Confessors to the Church of England under its Sufferings that at this time look upon it as an Arbitrary and indifferent thing And therefore in pursuance of my design in behalf of the Church of England I am obliged to examine the reasons and Principles upon which it is founded and to shew that it is so far from tending to the Peace of an Establish'd Church that it is destructive to the Being and Settlement of all the Christian Churches in the World And though here I have many learned worthy men for my Adversaries yet I hope to manage the Dispute with that Candour and Integrity that none shall have any reason to complain of any more unkindness than what is absolutely necessary to my doing right to the Church of England And this I am sure can give no Offence to good men how much soever I may chance to cross with their particular Sentiments and Opinions And as for bad men for there are of both sorts engaged in the Opinion I were not true to my own Integrity if I suffered my self to be in the least swayed by their good or bad Opinion for I write not to please but to convince them which I know as long as they continue bad is but
to provoke them And with this honest resolution I now proceed to vindicate one of the most evident but most injured Truths in the World And in it I shall be much briefer than at first I intended for when we have lopt off all that is not directly pertinent to the Enquiry as we shall reduce the Debate to a narrow compass so may we easily bring it to a speedy issue And therefore I shall purposely pass over all those things that relate only to the occasional exercise and outward administration of Church-Authority And particularly that wide argument of Dispute whether the distribution of Provinces and Diocesses were through the Roman Empire framed by the division of the Civil Government For whether it were or were not that concerns not the question of the Institution of a Ruling Clergy but only the manner or fashion of administring their Power when reduced to Practice For the extent of their Jurisdiction is is but accidental to the supremacy of their Power and whether the Circuit of a Monarchs Government be little or great it is all one as to the nature of Monarchy So that it is not at all material how the bounds of Diocesses came to be assign'd how Churches extended themselves from great Cities into the adjacent Territories till they sometimes swell'd into Provinces and how Bishops came to be subject to Metropolitans and Metropolitans to Patriarchs all which and divers other particulars though they are very copiously insisted upon by Learned men in the present Question are yet altogether useless as to its Determination because they only concern the outward and accidental Exercise and have no reference to the essential Form of Church-Government So that the only thing concern'd in our present enquiry is as Mr. Selden has rightly stated it Utrùm ex ipsâ purâ putâ Origine seu primâ ac merâ nascentis Ecclesiae Christianae Disciplinâ Episcopalis seu Ordo sive Dignitas sive Gradus Presbyterali seu Sacerdotali superior vel alius aut ei neutiquam dispar seu idem fuerit habendus That is in short whether the Church were at first founded in a superiority and subordination of Ecclesiastical Officers to each other or a parity and equality of all among themselves so that if we can prove the preeminence and superiority of one Order above all others in the Government of the Church from the beginning of it we shall thereby make good all that is essential to that Power and Authority that we challenge as proper only to the Episcopal Order and Office And this we doubt not but to perform with clear and demonstrative evidence from these three Topicks I. Of our Saviour's own express Institution II. The practice of the Apostles in Conformity to it III. The practice of the Primitive Church in the Ages next and immediatly after the Apostles And First As to our Saviour's Institution it is manifest That he founded his Church in an imparity of Ecclesiastical Officers in that he did by his own immediate Appointment authorize and set apart two distinct Orders of men for Ecclesiastical Ministries the Twelve Apostles and the Seventy Disciples whose Office if it were the same to what purpose were they distinguish'd And why when a place was vacant in the Apostolate must one be substituted by Divine Designation to complete the Number Why should not one of the Seventy without any further Election have served the turn seeing he was qualified with an Identity of Office and Order Nay to what purpose should they be reckoned apart under different Names and in different Ranks if there were no difference intended in their employments and commissions And why were they not all comprehended in one number and ranged in one Catalogue If the Twelve were nothing more than the Seventy and the Seventy nothing less than the Twelve to what purpose do we hear so oft of the Twelve and the Seventy or of the Seventy two for of that the learned dispute and not rather of the Eighty two or Eighty four For do we think that our Saviour would distinguish the Officers of his Kingdom by meer Words and empty Titles And yet the Apostleship could be nothing more if it carried in it no superiority of Office above the Seventy Some inequality we must discover and that intended too by our blessed Saviour himself else shall we never be able to give our selves any imaginable Account of their Institution And now what clearer evidence can any man demand for a Divine Right of Superiority and Subordination of Church Officers than our Saviour's own express and particular Institution Yes say they but the Inequality between the Twelve Apostles and the Seventy Disciples consisted in a superiority of Order and Office not of Power and Jurisdiction Very good This grants all that we can desire or demand to prove the Supreme Authority of the Supreme Order because every Superiour Ecclesiastical Order as such is Authoritative and therefore an eminency of Order must not only infer but include a superiority of Power seeing the Order it self as such if it be any thing is the proper and immediate seat of Authority and all the Jurisdiction of the Bishop whatsoever it is is claim'd and exercised by vertue of his Order So that if the Apostles were the highest Order of Ecclesiasticks they were for that Reason alone though there were no other the highest Judicature And in the same degrees of proportion that they were advanced above others in dignity of Title they were so in supremacy of Power because their Dignity as such is nothing elie but so much Power in the Church of God devest them of that and they immediately return to the condition of Ordinary and Unconsecrated men And the Apostles themselves were no more than all other common Believers but by vertue of their Commission to rule and govern the Church reverse that and they are degraded from their Order as well as stript of their Jurisdiction So lamentably do these learned men entangle themselves by distinguishing so vainly in this case between a superiority of Order and Power when the one is not only the very Ground and Foundation but to speak in the language of the Schoolmen from whom these Metaphysical nothings are taken the very Formality of the other and the Apostolical Power is Formally and as such the very same with the Apostolical Office So little real difference is there in this distinction that it is not possible to frame one in Notion and Conception but whoever pretends to conceive one must of necessity conceive both or conceive nothing And therefore I would very fain know wherein consists this superiority of Order and Dignity without any superiority of Power For what do men mean by Power but a right to Govern and what by Order but a superiority of some as Rulers and a subordination of others as Ruled What then is the difference between an inequality of Order and Power when they both equally signifie Superiority and Subjection
And therefore we do not find that the Apostles acted with a plenitude of Power till he had given them a new Commission after his Resurrection and it is remarkable that in St. Matthew 16. 19. he vests them with the power of Binding and Loosing in the Future Tense But in St. John 20. 23. after his Resurrection it is expressed in the Present Tense Then it was that he gave them that Authority which himself had exercised whilst he remain'd on Earth But then when immediately in pursuance of their new Commission the Apostles thought themselves obliged to choose one into their Order to supply the Vacancy made by the death of Judas What can be more evident than that they thought the Apostolical Office by our Saviour's Appointment distinct from and superiour to all other Offices in the Church So that it is manifest that the Form observed by the Apostles in the Planting and Governing of Churches was Model'd according to our Saviour's own Platform and after that it is not at all material to enquire whether he only drew the Model or erected the Building But whichsoever he did it is improved into an impregnable Demonstration from the undoubted Practice of the Apostles and from them the perpetual Tradition of the Catholick Church in that it is plain that they thought themselves obliged to stand to this Original Form of Church-Government For the Apostles we all know and all Parties grant during their days kept up the distinction and preeminence of their Order and from them the Bishops of the First Ages of the Church claim'd their Succession and every where challenged their Episcopal Authority from the Institution of Christ and the Example of his Apostles And now are we enter'd upon the second main Controversie viz. The Authority of the Apostolical Practice against which three things are usually alledged That neither can we have that certainty of Apostolical Practice which is necessary to constitute a Divine Right nor secondly is it probable that the Apostles did tie themselves to any one fixed Course in Modelling Churches nor thirdly if they did doth it necessarily follow that we must observe the same And the first of these is made out from the equivalency of the names Bishop and Presbyter secondly from the Ambiguity of some places of Scripture pleaded in behalf of different Forms of Government thirdly from the Defectiveness Ambiguity Partiality and Repugnancy of the Records of the succeeding Ages which should inform us what was the Apostolical Practice But as to the first I shall wholly wave the dispute of the signification of the words because it is altogether beside the purpose and if it were not our other Proofs are so pregnant as to render it altogether useless Neither indeed would this ever have been any matter of Dispute had not our Adversaries for want of better Arguments been forced to make use of such slender pretences But how impotently Salmasius and Blondel who were the main Founders of the Argument have argued from the Community of the Names the Identity of the Office any one that has the patience to read them over may satisfie himself As for my own part I cannot but admire to see Learned men persist so stubbornly in a palpable Impertinency when from the Equivalency of the words Bishop and Presbyter in the Apostles time they will infer no imparity of Ecclesiastical Officers notwithstanding it is so evident and granted by themselves that the Apostles enjoyed a superiority of Power over the other Pastors of the Church which being once proved or granted and themselves never doubted of it to infer their beloved 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Parity of the Clergy from the Equivocal signification of those two words is only to out-face their own Convictions and their Adversaries Demonstrations For if it be proved and themselves cannot deny it that there was an inequality of Offices from the Superiority of the Apostles it is a very Childish attempt to go about to prove that there was not because there were two Synonymous Terms whereby to express the whole Order of the Clergy But to persist in this trifling Inference as Salmasius has who when he was informed of its manifest weakness and absurdity would never renounce it but still repeated it in one Book after another without any improvement but of Passion and Confidence is one of the most woful Examples that I remember of a learned man's Trifling that has not the ingenuity to yield when he finds himself vanquish'd not only by his Adversary but his Argument Neither shall I trouble my self with other mens disputes about particular Texts of Scripture when it is manifest from the whole Current of Scripture that the Apostles exercised a superiority of Power over the other Pastors of the Church and that is all that is requisite to the Argument from Apostolical Practice for as yet it is nothing to us whether they were Presbyters or Bishops that they set over particular Churches that shall be enquired into when we come to the Practice of the Primitive Church it is enough that they were subject to the Apostles for then by Apostolical Practice there was a Superiority and Subordination in Church-Government And therefore I cannot but wonder here too at the blindness of Walo Messalinus who in pursuance of his Verbal Argument produces this passage out of Theodoret and spends a great deal of the first part of his Book in declaiming upon it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Then the same men were call'd Presbyters and Bishops and those that we now call Bishops they then call'd Apostles but in process of time the name of Apostolate was appropriate to them who were truly and properly Apostles and the name of Bishop was applied to them who were formerly call'd Apostles Than which words beside that they contain the true state of the Question there is scarce a clearer passage in all Antiquity to confound his cause For what can be a plainer Reproof to their noise about the Equivalency of words than to be told that it is true that the words Bishop and Presbyter signified the same thing in the Apostles time but that those that we now call Bishops were then call'd Apostles who exercised the Episcopal Power over the other Clergy but that afterward in process of time they left the word Apostolate to those who were strictly and properly so call'd and stil'd all other Bishops who in former times were stiled Apostles What I say can be more peremptory against his Opinion that concludes from the equivalency of Names to the parity of Power than this that notwithstanding the words were equivalent yet the Episcopal Power was then in the Apostles whose successors in their supremacy came in after-times to be call'd Bishops And if so then is it evident that there was the same imparity of Church-Officers in the Apostles time as in succeeding Ages Nay our friend Walo is not content to make this out for us only as to the
Apostles themselves but as to their immediate Successors whom they employed in the settlement of Churches and to whom they committed the Apostolical Power for their Government and these too he proves were stil'd Apostles such as Titus Timothy Epaphroditus Clemens Linus Marcus so that not only the Apostles but the Evangelists as they call'd them were distinguish'd from the other Clergy and endued with a superiority of Power over their respective Churches and hereby we gain the authority of Apostolical Practice not only for themselves but for their Companions and Successors which does not only extend our Argument but joyns together the practice of the Primitive Times of which we have certain Records with that of the Apostles and so prevents all their fond Dreams of an unknown Interval immediately after the death of the Apostles for if these Apostolical men supplied their Places it will be very easie to find out who supplied theirs Neither thirdly need I trouble my self with any long dispute concerning the Obligation of Apostolical Practice for whether or no meer Apostolical Practice be obligatory by vertue of their Example is very little material to our Enquiry for some things are too trifling or too transient in their own Natures to deserve to pass into prescription but it is enough in this case that what the Apostles did was in pursuance of our Saviour's Institution and that in a matter of perpetual concernment to the Church and they who require to the Obligation of such an Apostolical Practice an express Law to declare their intention that it should bind for ever are guilty of the same phantastick niceness as they that require the same for the perpetuity of every Divine Law and therefore have been consider'd already And for that reason I shall add nothing more to what I have already said as to this particular than to grant that whatever the Apostles either commanded or practised upon some particular temporary and occasional Cases was not sufficient to found any universal and unchangeable Obligation because the reason of the Precept was apparently transient and the goodness of the action casual But otherwise if there were any Prescript or Practice of theirs though it were not founded upon any Divine Institution that did not relate to peculiar Occasions and Circumstances but are or may be of equal usefulness to all Places Times and Persons that is a certain and undoubted evidence of their constant and unabolishable Obligation And therefore here I shall only put them to their former task to assign what particular ground and reason there was of establishing a Superiority and Subordination of Church-Officers in the times of the Apostles that is ceased in all succeeding Ages of the Church and till they can discharge this Task advise them not to depart rashly from so sacred and venerable a Prescription But that which improves the Argument both from our Saviour's Institution and the Apostles Practice into a complete Demonstration is the practice of the Primitive Churches in the Ages next and immediately succeeding the Apostles For if the Government of the Church were by our Saviour founded upon Divine Institution in an inequality of Church-Officers and if the first Governours of it thought themselves obliged to keep close to its Original Platform and if their immediate Successors conceived themselves as much obliged to observe the same as imposed upon them by the Command of Christ and deliver'd to them by the Example and Tradition of his Apostles that certainly may serve for a very competent proof of its necessity and perpetuity Now then as for the power and preheminence of the Episcopal Order it is attested by the best Monuments and Records of the first and most remote Antiquity and we find such early instances and evidences of it that unless it descended from the Apostles times we can never give any account in the World whence it derived its Original And this brings us upon the main sanctuary of our Adversaries viz. The defectiveness of Antiquity in reference to the shewing what certain Form the Apostles observed in settling the Government of Churches and here they run into a large common place of the deep silence of antiquity and the defectiveness of the Records of the Church in the interval next and immediately succeeding the Apostles But here in the first place I must desire them to consider that if this Objection be of any force against the certainty of Apostolical Tradition in this particular it will utterly overthrow all the testimony of the Ancients as to all other matters of Faith and particularly as to the certain Canon and Divine Authority of the Scriptures for if they are not as is pretended competent Witnesses of the practice of the Apostles because of their distance from the time of the Apostles neither for the same reason are their reports to be relied upon with any confidence as to the certainty of any of their Writings It is not to be expected that I should here reprent how false this exception is de facto and how unreasonable de jure either against the Constitutions or the Authentick Epistles of the Apostles it is enough that they stand and fall together so that whoever opposes the Divine and Apostolical Form of Church Government as delivered to us by the Primitive Church does upon his own principles defeat and reject all the proofs of the Divine Authority of the holy Scriptures in that those sceptical grounds and pretences he is forced to urge against one fall as dangerously on both And this may serve to prevent and invalidate the force of their Argument without answering it when if they should deal as rigorously in any other case as they are pleased to do in this the most certain and undoubted Records cannot escape the severity of their censure Though our comfort is that neither of them are liable to such wild and wanton Objections in that as I shall shew the Tradition of the Church was always constant and uninterrupted and that there was no such Chasm as is pretended between the times of the Apostles and the next Christian Writers For to say nothing here of the Canon of the Scriptures though the men of that Age left us no formal Histories and Catalogues of the succession of Bishops in all their several Sees wherewith some men unreasonable enough upbraid us when it is so manifest that it was at that time too young for that care in that as yet there was scarce any succession Yet were they no less than Apostolical men that vouched the Apostolical Order and Jurisdiction of Bishops and this one would think enough to satisfie any modest or ingenious man of their Institution from the beginning When it is asserted or rather supposed by the very first Writers of the Church that were capable of attesting it So that whoever can withstand their Evidence is proof against all Evidence of matter of Fact and may if he please laugh at all the Tales and Legends that are told concerning the
superiority of order is made equivalent to a superiority of power for that from the time of our Saviours Resurrection is granted them by our Adversaries though it is denied their Successours Thus we enlarge or abate or evacuate that Commission that God himself has given them at our own meer will and pleasure If it be convenient for our cause to assert in one place that they were vested with no superiority of Power they shall be put off with an empty superiority of order separated from power If in another that Assertion seem not so convenient to our purpose they shall be presently advanced to an absolute supremacy over the other Pastors of the Church but then that must last only during their lives and as for their Successours we are pleased to degrade them from the Apostolical both Order and Authority and allow them nothing but an empty degree of I know not what but to say no more of the difference between Order and Degree As for the distinction between Order and Jurisdiction though in one place I affirm that the Apostles were a distinct Order from the other Clergy without any superiority of Jurisdiction yet in another if my cause require it there shall be but one order in the Christian Clergy and no difference but what is made by Jurisdiction and the Bishops themselves shall be equal to Presbyters in order by Divine Right and only superiour in jurisdiction by Ecclesiastical Constitution For so I read that for our better understanding of this we must consider a twofold power belonging to Church-Officers a Power of Order and a Power of Jurisdiction for in every Presbyter there are some things inseparably joyned to his Function and belonging to every one in his personal capacity both in actu primo and in actu secundo both as to the right and power to do it and the exercise and execution of that power such are preaching the Word visiting the Sick administring Sacraments c. but there are other things which every Presbyter has an aptitude and a Jus to in actu primo but the limitation and exercise of that Power does belong to the Church in common and belongs not to any one personally but by a further power of choice or delegation to it such is the power of visiting Churches taking care that particular Pastors discharge their duty such is the power of Ordination and Church-Censures and making Rules for Decency in the Church This is that we call the power of Jurisdiction Now this latter power though it belongs habitually and in actu primo to every Presbyter yet being about matters of publick and common concernment some further Authority in a Church constituted is necessary besides the power of Order and when this power either by consent of the Pastors of the Church or by the appointment of a Christian Magistrate or both is devolved to some particular Persons though quoad aptitudinem the power remain in every Presbyter yet quoad executionem it belongs to those who are so appointed Whatever truth there is in this the Assertion is plain that our Saviour appointed but one order in the Clergy and that the difference which has since been made by the consent of the Church consists in nothing else but Jurisdiction And this is very consistent with the former Assertion that there was no difference between the Apostles and the LXX beside distinction of order when now there is no more by divine appointment than one order in the Church And yet after all this their fluttering between Order and Power Degree and Order Power of Order and Power of Jurisdiction all superiority of Order so much as it is is so much superiority of Power Thus to take their own Instance of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at Athens the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the President of the Assembly was so far superiour over his Colleagues in Power as he was in Order For whatsoever was peculiar to his Office gave him some more advantage in the Government of the Common-wealth than they had for the very power of calling and adjourning Assemblies presiding and moderating in them is no small degree of Power in a Republican Government But seeing the difference between a superiority of Order and Power is thought to be made out best by these parallel Instances of Commonwealths let us run the parallel with the Apostles and the LXX for if to be superiour only in Order is to be President in an Assembly or Prolocutor in a Convocation and if this were all the Office peculiar to the Apostles then when our Saviour appointed seventy Disciples and twelve Apostles he made twelve Prolocutors over a Convocation of seventy Seeing therefore that is too great a number of Speakers for so small an Assembly it is manifest that when he separated them for a distinct Office he intended something more by an Apostle than meerly a Chairman in a Presbytery and whatever it is it is either an higher power than others had or it is nothing at all Secondly This Succession is not so evident and convinced in all places as it ought to be to demonstrate the thing intended For it is not enough to shew a List of some Persons in the great Churches of Jerusalem Antioch Rome and Alexandria but it should be produced at Philippi Corinth and Caesarea c. This I perceive to be our Adversaries darling Objection being the only matter made use of to shift off several heads of Argument This was the proof of the defect of the Testimony of Antiquity as to places and is now here the only evidence of its ambiguity and by and by will be called in as the only instance of its Repugnancy But certainly their fondness to it is not grounded upon any great vertue that they see in it but they are only forced for want of more material Arguments to lay a mighty stress upon such poor pretences as in any other dispute they would be a shamed to own For first supposing the Succession cannot be shewn in all Churches is that any proof against the Succession that can And suppose I cannot produce a List of Bishops at Philippi Corinth and Caesarea shall I thence conclude against the Succession though I have very good History for it at Jerusalem Antioch Rome and Alexandria This is such an Inference as rather shews a mans good will to his Opinion than his Understanding But I have already proved that it is highly reasonable to conclude the customs of those Churches that are not known from those that are and apparently absurd to question the Records of those that are preserved for the uncertainty of those that are not But secondly What though we do not find in all Churches an accurate Catalogue of the succession of all Bishops do we find any Instance in any one ancient Church of any other form of Goverment If we can that were something to the Argument but that is not pretended in the Exception But otherwise because the exact
And therefore in answer to it I will at present only return these few brief Considerations each whereof will be enough to satisfie men if they will be reasonable and altogether more than enough to silence them if they will not The first ill consequence then of this Opinion is only this that it charges our Saviour and his Apostles of not making sufficient provision for the lasting peace and settlement of the Church so that had not After-ages supplied their defects in such things as were absolutely necessary to the Government of it there had been no remedy for curing or avoiding eternal schisms and divisions for according to this account of the Original of the Episcopal superiority all the world were by sad experience convinced of its great necessity for the prevention of factions and confusions Now what a dishonourable reflection is this upon the Wisdom of our Saviour and his Apostles to institute a Society of men in the World without providing a competent Government to secure its continuance in peace and unity But then secondly whilst this Conceit explodes the claim founded upon Divine Right it is forced to grant a necessity founded upon natural Reason so that acccording to it Episcopal Government is made necessary by vertue of all those Laws of God and of Nature that provide for the Churches peace and the preservation of Society For if this were the ground of that universal agreement in the Institution of Bishops that St. Jerom speaks of in his toto Orbe decretum est viz. ut schismatum semina tollerentur and if there were no remedy for the prevention of this evil whilst the Government of the Church was administred by the whole Body of the Presbyters the consequence is unavoidable that though our Saviour or at least his Apostles had no more discretion that to leave all Church-Officers in an equality of Power yet the light of Nature and the Laws of Society made it necessary to establish a superiority of one Order above another Ecclesiae salus in summi sacerdotis dignitate pendet cui si non exors quaedam ab omnibus eminens detur potestas tot in Ecclesiis efficientur schismata quot sacerdotes The security of the Churches peace depends upon the preheminence of the Bishops power which were it not supreme and paramount in reference to the other Clergy we should quickly have as many Schisms as Priests says St. Jerom Setting aside the Authority of the man the reason and experience of the Argument it self is unanswerable For in such a vast body of men as the Clergy it is obvious to every mans understanding that considering the passions of mankind there could be no possible agreement and by consequence no Government without a superiority of power in some above others Now this is another pretty handsome reflection upon the wisdom of our Saviour and his Apostles that they were so shamefully defective in their first settlement of the Church as shewed them to be so far from being directed by any divine and infallible Spirit that they fell short of the principles of common discretion For though any man of an ordinary understanding might easily discern how impossible it was to avoid Schisms while the Power of the Church resided in the whole Body of the Clergy partly by the bandying of the Presbyters one against another partly by the siding of the People with some against the rest partly by the too common use of the Power of Ordination in Presbyters by which they were more able to increase their own Party by ordaining those who would joyn with them and by this means perpetuate Schisms in the Church when I say these inconveniences were so obvious what a prodigious neglect or weakness must it be to leave the Church through all Ages in such a shattered and tottering condition insomuch that it must unavoidably have perished had not some that came after them invented better means to prevent or redress mischiefs than they had left them For upon this it was that the graver and wiser sort considering the abuses following the promiscuous use of this power of Ordination and withal having in their minds the excellent frame of the government of the Church under the Apostles and their Deputies for preventing future Schisms and Divisions among themselves unanimously agreed to chuse one out of their number who was best qualified for so great a trust and to devolve the exercise of the power of Ordination and Jurisdiction to him so that it seems we are more obliged to those wiser and graver sort than to the Apostles for their care in preventing Schisms and Divisions through all Ages of the Church But thirdly this conceit bottoms upon no better foundation than a bold and presumptuous conjecture And there is no dealing with such men as are able to blast the credit of all the most undoubted Records of ancient times with an imaginary and sinister suspicion for when we have pursued the Succession of Bishops through all Ages of the Church up to the very times next to the Apostles it requires somewhat a bold face to tell us that though this perhaps may be sufficiently evident from the practice of the Primitive Church and of the Apostles and their Deputies yet there was a dark interval between the death of the Apostles and the time of the most ancient Fathers in which it was abolished and a new Form of Government set up but that being found inconvenient it was thought good and agreed upon in all Churches to lay that aside and restore the old Apostolical superiority These are very hard conceits especially when they cannot so much as pretend to give us any the least probable account where and when and by whom this was done And this is pretty modest to bear up so confidently against all the current of Antiquity without so much as any pretences of ground or evidence to rely upon But so it hapned once upon a time in which toto Orbe decretum est though when that time was we have no more certain knowledg than we have in what degree of Latitude this totus Orbis lies Perhaps it was as Blondel will have it about the thirty fifth year after the death of St. John and what if he had been pleased to have said the fifteenth or sixty fifth year the guess had been altogether both as learned and as well grounded However is it not a pleasant thing to tell us boldly and at all adventure in toto Orbe decretum est without so much as telling us when or where or attempting to prove the matter of Fact especially when it is plainly impossible that so universal and remarkable a change should be so unanimously agreed upon and effected and that upon such great and urgent reasons without ever being so much as taken notice of Why may we not as well discredit any Record chuse what you please by pretending there once was or perhaps might have been an unknown time in which all mankind conspired
confined my self to the discourses of men of sense and learning i. e. no Smectymnuans and have distinctly considered and I hope confuted all their material pretences against the Episcopal superiority in the Premises But as for Grammatical Criticisms and Historical Digressions they concern not us because they concern not our Enquiry And if learned men would but come up roundly and keep ingenuously to the main point of the Controversie they must rub their foreheads pretty hard to out-face the evidence of our cause But alas the custom of them all is to range up and down through the whole field or rather wood of Antiquity and pursue every thing little or great that starts within their view And they seem to make choice of this Subject rather from it to take occasion of shewing the variety of their Reading than with any design to make good the undertaking of their Title Page And it is very observable that among the many thousand Pages that have been of late years wasted in the Anti-episcopal cause it will be very hard to find half an hundred directly to the purpose And that of it self is Argument enough that they have but very little to say against it And what that is I have in the Premises fully represented for I protest that as I will answer it to Almighty God I know no other pretences that are at all pertinent or material besides those that I have considered But in the last place beside the direct and positive Argument that I have thus far pusued from ourSaviours own express Institution the undoubted practice of the Apostles and the most unquestionable Records of the Primitive Church I come to the last Topick propounded those enormous inconveniences that unavoidably result from the contrary Opinion I shall represent only two The first is this that if the Form of Government in the Christian Church be not setled by the Founder of it that then we are at a loss to know by whom it may or ought to be determined For the Society of the Church being founded upon an immediate Divine Right no Person can justly challenge any Authority in it as such unless by vertue of some Grant or Commission from the divine Founder of it If therefore those Commissions that were granted by our Saviour to his Apostles do not descend to some certain Order of men as their Successours in that Authority wherewith they were invested who shall challenge the exercise of it after their decease To this we never received any certain Answer but are only told in the general That the particular Form of Government in the Church is left wholly to the prudence of those in whose power and trust it is to see that the peace of the Church be secured on lasting foundations But then I would fain know who those are that are intrusted with this Power It would have been very well worth their pains to have determined the particular Persons expresly appointed by God to this Office Especially when it is laid down as a fundamental Principle that all things necessary to the Churches peace must be clearly revealed in the Word of God and if so then no one particular Form may be established in it by any Authority whatsoever because no one particular Form as is all along pleaded is prescribed by the Word of God and yet it is plainly necessary to the Churches peace if Government be so that it be governed by some one particular Form But yet however when we come to enquire after these Trustees to whose power it is left to see the peace of the Church secured on lasting foundations the answer is ever ambiguous and unconstant Sometimes it is the Civil Magistrate and sometimes the People But this very uncertainty where this Power is lodged is both in it self and according to the fundamental Notion of the Hypothesis that we oppose a manifest confutation of the whole design For if our Saviour have not determined to whom it appertains that is evidence enough that he never intended by this way to provide for the peace and settlement of his Church For if he had appointed such Feoffees in Trust as is imagined he would at least have left it certain who they were that he intended which not having done that is demonstration enough that it was never his intention to set any such pretended Guardians over his Church But be it where it will it is very strange that these Learned men should be so intent upon the fineness of their Model as never to consider the wild consequences of either way when reduced to practice For be it in the Civil Magistrate they would first have done very well according to their own Rule ro have searched for some Commission in the Word of God whereby our Saviour entrusted this power with him We find indeed Prophesies and Predictions that Princes should become Patrons and Protectors of his Church but that they should be vested with a Power of instituting and abolishing Church Orders and Offices at pleasure is such a wild conceit as will not find any the least countenance from the Word of God Secondly By what Authority was the Church governed from our Saviour to the Reign of Constantine when if he had appointed the Civil Magistrate Overseer of his Infant Church there was then none that cared to execute his Office Beside thirdly If Church-Officers derive their Authority in the Church from the meer appointment of the Civil Magistrate they are then only of Humane Institution and derive not their Power from any appointment of our Saviour and so are only Ministers of State and not of the Gospel But to put it into the power of any mortal man to alter the whole frame of Government in the Church as he pleases is the most improper way in the world to provide for its peace and settlement For by this means it will be ever in the power of any Common-wealth lawfully to overturn all manner of Ecclesiastical Order at pleasure If to day perhaps the Bishops either by chance or by vertue of some Grant from the Civil Government enjoy the Supreme Power in the Church it may with good Authority to morrow depose them and translate their Power to the Presbyters from the Presbyters to the Deacons from the Deacons to the People and from the People to the Pope and it would be very consistent no doubt with the wisdom of Christ in founding his Church and providing for the peace and settlement of it to leave its whole frame of Government thus at the Mercy of any mans Power or Will We have one example of this project put in practice upon Record in the Long Parliaments Midsummer-Model of Reformation when they vote June 12. 1641. that all Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction should be put into the hands of such Commissioners as their Worships should think fit In pursuance of which they vote June 21. that six of the Clergy and six of the Laity should be appointed in every County for the
began the breach the lopping off of that infinite power and by consequence the stopping of those vast treasures that continually flowed from all parts of Christendom into the Popes Coffers Though many other corruptions that were crept into the Church partly by the negligence of the Popes while they alone governed in it partly by the Incursions of barbarous Nationâ— they as justly complained of and might probably have had them all reformed if they would have yielded to him his two fundamental points Wealth and Empire And as that was then their just complaint so is it still of all the Bishops that are by force kept in his Communion Not only all their Revenues but which is much more dishonourable all their Power being taken from them they being every where unless such as retain to the Court of Rome little better than the Popes Curates nay not so much being stript of all Authority and the Government of their Diocesse wholly put into other hands And here comes in the great Mystery of Jesuitism for this complaint was so Universal that it was impossible for the Pope alone to withstand it and therefore this project was at last fixed upon being at first started by a fanatique Souldier to set up a new Order of Ecclesiasticks exempt from all other Jurisdiction and immediately dependent upon and absolutely subject to the Pope and by them chiefly to manage all the Affairs of Christendom And there lies all the strength of the Jesuits in their Vow of absolute Obedience to their Superiour and of their Superiour to the Pope so that whatever they are commanded be it never so unaccountable to their own Consciences they are implicitely bound to execute upon pain of damnation And this device has taken so successfully that notwithstanding all that opposition that has been made to the Order they have for many years exercised an absolute Tyranny not only over all the People but almost all the Governours of that Church And to justifie these irregular proceedings the Bishops are by little tricks and senseless distinctions of the School-men degraded into the same Order with the Presbyters and then the Priests of the Jesuits Order are as well qualified to exercise Jurisdiction as themselves especially if licensed thereto by the Popes Dispensation according to the Decree of Innocent the IV. Ex delegatione Domini Papae quilibet Clericus potest quicquid habet ipse conferre So that by this device they may be enabled to give Priests Orders as well as exercise Episcopal Jurisdiction This design was all along aimed at in the Institutions of their Regular Priests but never effectually compassed till the foundation of this Society So that you see that the whole mystery of Jesuitism at last resolves it self into Presbytery and the fundamental Principle of both consists in slighting and opposing the Episcopal Order And therefore it is a little observable that they were both born into the World at the same time it being the year 1541. when Calvin made himself Pope of his Lay-Cardinals at Geneva and Ignatius obtained to be made Superiour of his Order at Rome Since which time between them both Christendom has enjoyed very little peace or quiet and particularly by their joynt-malice was wrought just that time an hundred years viz. 1641. the overthrow and destruction of the Church of England And if the Church of Rome could but get rid of the Church of England by the help and zeal of the other Factions she would quickly scorn and defie all their little Pretences For when they have run into all their sub-divisions there can be no more than two other Forms of Government either the Genevian of Presbytery or the Racovian of Independency but both being so palpable Innovations in the Christian Church and withall of so very late a date it will be no difficult matter for the Church of Rome to defend her own Title how bad soever against such upstart and absurd Competitors But when they have to do with the Church of England they are then apparently bafled with the undeniable practice and constitution of the Primitive Church And this is so observable that I do not remember any learned Writer of the Church of Rome that has undertaken to charge any fault or defect upon the Constitution of our Church it self Here their only Topick is to upbraid her with those abuses that have been put upon her by other by-designs in which indeed she is very much concerned as a Sufferer but no way guilty as an Actor For what is that to me if when I see gross and scandalous abuses in the Church I endeavour to remove or reform them other men that pretend to come in to my assistance shall under that pretence design nothing but Plunder and Sacriledge That lies wholly upon their Conscience but I am innocent and it is very disingenuous and foolish too to load me with their wickedness Let them prove that there were no corruptions in their Church that needed Reformation and then I must confess I am convicted but if they cannot then the baffle lies plainly at their own doors and it is in vain to charge me with the miscarriage of other men This I say is the state of the Controversie between the Church of England and the Church of Rome as to this point and whilst we keep to this Station nothing is more easie than to maintain our ground but if once we quit it we fall under all the disadvantages of Innovators And however we may afterwards annoy the Enemy we can never defend our selves And that I say is the case of all other parties in their opposition to the Church of Rome excepting the Church of England and those that stick to the same Primitive Constitution As therefore we are concerned to fortifie our selves against the Romans let us secure this Bulwark that they can never force but if we once forsake it we have nothing left but to encounter Innovation with Innovation and then when both Parties are in the wrong it is not much material who overcomes This is all I think good at this present to propound in the behalf of the Church of England and when these Principles are laid at the foundation of the building it will then and not till then be seasonable to proceed to more practicable Propositions and therefore I shall say no more at present than only to summon in all good and honest men to the maintenance of this just Cause as they will one day answer it to Almighty God against all the present open and wicked attempts of Atheism and Superstition and as they have any fear of God or man as they love their Country or their Posterity as they have any sense of Interest or Honour or Conscience neither by their carelesness nor their cowardise to betray the best Church in the world to the fury and the folly of the worst of men And in this case let no man make excuses or raise difficulties from the badness or
the opposition of the times the worse they are the more they require our zeal to oppose and to reform them And it is never more seasonable to assert the Rights of the Christian Church than when they are most disowned Let us but do our duty and God will do his work and let us not betake our selves to tricks and shifts upon any pretences if any such there are of loss or danger the Church of Christ subsists upon no other Politicks than Courage and Integrity Let us then be true to those two fundamental Principles of Christianity and our Saviour has undertaken for the event that the Gates of Hell much less Rome or Geneva shall never be able to prevail against it POSTSCRIPT I Have thus far adventured to state the Case of the Protestant Religion as it is established by Law in the Church of England Thereby to declare what it is that we contend for in our Disputes against all sorts of Recusants and Dissenters For it is not at all material what we oppose but what we assert and there would be no harm in Errour were it not for its Contrariety to Truth So that before we defend the Church of England it is necessary to define the true state of its cause otherwise we contend about we know not what For as for the general Term of Protestancy it is an indefinite thing so that if all the men in England that are Enemies or no Friends to the Pope of Rome may be listed under that name we have some Protestants that believe there is a God and some that believe there is none some that believe they have a Saviour and a Soul to save and some that laugh at both there are Hobbian Protestants Muggletonian Protestants Socinian Protestants Quaker Protestants Rebel Protestants Protestants of 41 and Protestants of 48. All or most of which are as different as Popery it self from the true Protestancy of the Church of England And therefore it is necessary to stick close to that both as it is established by the Law of the Land and by the Law of Christ. For unless we limit it to the Law of the Land we may in time have a Church consisting of nothing but Protestants dissenting from the established Religion that is a Church not only without but against it self And unless we derive the Authority of that Religion that is by Law established from the antecedent Law of Christ we may quickly be as we are in a fair way to be a Reformed Church of Protestant Atheists that is a Church without Religion And therefore all must be built upon this one Boâ—â—om that the Church owned by the Law of England is the very same that was established by the Law of Christ. For unless we suppose that the Church was originally setled by our Saviour with divine Authority we deny his Supremacy over his own Church and unless we suppose that the supreme Government of the Kingdom has power to abett and ratifie our Saviours establishment by Civil Laws we deny his Majesties Supremacy over his Christian Subjects and therefore both together must be taken in to the right State and Constitution of the Church of England And that do what we can will involve the Leaders of our present Separation in the guilt both of Schism and Sedition of Schism in the Church in that they withdraw themselves and their obedience from those who are vested with a power to command them by vertue of a Divine Commission of Sedition in the State in that they needlesly and without any justifiable pretence violate the Laws of the Common-wealth Though the truth is their Dissension is somewhat worse For as they manage it it is not only Sedition but Rebellion in that they do not only disobey the Laws but disavow their obligation standing resolutely upon that one Principle that no Magistrate whatsoever has any power of establishing any thing relating to the Worship of God So that the Act of Uniformity is not so much faulty for the particular matters contained in it as for the unlawful and usurped Authority of it And when the King and Parliament enjoyned the Book of Common-Prayer to be used in all Churches they challenged a Power to which they had no right and invaded the Prerogative of God himself This is the first ground of the Separation as it is stated by the chief Ring-leaders of it and it is a plain renunciation of their Allegiance as well as Conformity I can with all the streinings of Charity make no better of it and should be heartily glad if I could see them without shufling and prevarication clear themselves of so pernicious a Principle To conclude methinks Religion has been long enough trifled with in this Kingdom and after so long and so sad experience of our folly it is time to return to some sense of discretion and sobriety Before the late barbarous War we had the Scepter of Jesus Christ and the divine right of Presbytery to advance but now after the murder of an hundred thousand men that Cause has proved so ridiculous as that it is grown ashamed of it self However the pretence was great and solemn but at this time the People are driven into the same excesses against the Church no body knows for what unless it be that some men among us are too proud or too peevish to recant their Follies And therefore I conjure them in the name of God to lay their hands upon their hearts and without passion seriously to consider what it is for which they renounce the Church in which they were baptised into the Communion of the Catholick Church tear and rend it into numberless pieces and factions scare multitudes of silly and well-meaning People out of it as they tender the salvation of their souls and put the whole Kingdom into perpetual tumults and combustions about Religion and when they have considered it I shall only bind it upon their Consciences so to answer it to themselves now as they hope to answer it to their Saviour at the last day As for the foreign Reformed Churches I have said nothing of them because they are altogether out of the compass of my Argument which is confined within the four Seas and concerns only those that either are or ought to be members of the Church of England But if in any thing any other Churches deviate from the Primitive Institution they must stand and fall to their own Master And God forbid we should be so uncharitable as to go about to un-church them or renounce brotherly communion with them or to think that our blessed Saviour should withdraw the promise of his Grace and Protection from them For if every defect from his Institution should forfeit the Rights of a Christian Church there never was as we may find by the Apostles account of the Churches in their times nor ever will be such a thing as a Church in the world For in this life it is not to be expected that any thing
should be absolutely perfect the very nature of Christianity supposes Imperfection and accepts of Integrity and as long as with sincere Affections men adhere to the Principles of the Christian Church they are within the promise of the grace of God Neither beside this does it appear that they in the least refuse communion with the Episcopal Church which is the main charge against our Separatists nay on the contrary it is too evident that they unanimously condemn our Diffenters for their Schismatical departure from it But being it seems accidentally cast into another Form of Government in the midst of State-tumults they continue in it either first through the power of prejudice and prepossession which are strong things and more or less to be allowed to all men Or secondly for want of opportunity to new-mould themselves after the platform of the Episcopal Churches which if they should attempt in Popish Countries it is easie to foresee with what fury it would be opposed Or else thirdly for want of due information of the Primitive Institution supposing that as our Saviour has founded the Society of his Church upon Divine Right so he has left it in the power of every particular Church to model it self as it shall judge most convenient to its own circumstances Or lastly out of that reverence they bare to the Authority of some learned men who at the beginning of the Reformation unfortunately hapned to mistake the true Form of the Primitive Government Or for whatever other reason it is we ought to be so charitable as to think that they are not convinced of the divine Institution of Episcopacy or if they are we ought to be so civil as to think that they would not refuse it and then as long as their mistake proceeds from want of information it were an unchristian thing to deny them our Charity much more Gods Grace and Mercy for though his Laws are perfect and unchangeable yet in the execution of them he condescends to the errors and weaknesses of his Creatures so that it is but a lamentable way of arguing against any divine Institution because such and such Churches have departed from it this were to set up their Authority not only above but against that of God himself However it is to be hoped that in a little time they may come to a right understanding of this thing for the controversie about it has not been till very lately throughly sifted in the Latine Tongue but now it is determined with that strange weight of Reason that they cannot but discern when they come impartially as in time they will to examine it on which side the truth stands I pray God to assist and direct them and us to a right understanding of things that all parts of his holy Catholick Church may daily grow more and more into Unity among themselves and more and more conform their holy Discipline to the purity of the Primitive Institution Amen FINIS Phys. c. 26. Leviatiâ— c. 12. Leviath c. 23. 14 c. 26. c. 35. c. 42. ib. p. 311. ibid. ibid. c. 43. c. 32. c. 35. c. 42. ibid. c. 3â— c. 42. Cap. 11. De jure nat Gent. l. 2. 2. Comment in Eutych p. 54. V. Scaliger de emendat temp 1â— Psal. 1. 1. Ps. 26. 4. p. 12â— P. 237. Epil B. 1. c. 12. Mat. 4. 17. Lib. 16. Tit. 2. L. 45. Nov. 6. c. 1. Nov. 131. c. 1. Praefat. in Eutych Diff. 1. cap. 1. Lib. 3. cap. 18. L. 3. c. 4. Part. 1. Cap. 2. Walo Messal p. 252. Diss. 2. c. 1. § 2. Lib. 2. Cap. 4. Animad In Eâ—â—o Chron. N. MMCXL Ep. l. 3. chap. 18. Apol. p. 23. V. Vales. Annot. in Euseb. hist. l. 5. Prooem cap. 4. Comment in Eutych p. 27. Prefat in Eutych p. 6. Dissert 3. cap. 10. Vindic. l. 1. c. 10. Pag. 38.
that claims no higher Obligation confesses it self to be no Religion for none it is unless Enacted by Divine Authority The second is that of Mr. Selden and his Followers that acknowledges the standing Laws of the Christian Church to have been derived from a Divine Institution but derives all manner of Government and Authority in it from the Civil State The third is the Opinion of some Learned and Moderate Divines both at home and abroad that grant indeed the necessity of some kind of Government in the Church but deny it to have been setled and fixed by our Saviour in any one Form or upon any certain Order of men and leave it wholly at some-bodies disposal though who that somebody is they have not as yet clearly determined to appoint Officers and Governours as shall be thought most prudent and suitable to the present Circumstances of things Now upon any of these Principles it is not at all material whether we assert any such thing as a Church of England or not for they are all but so many Contradictions both to the being of a Church and to themselves at least if we pursue each party to the bottom of their Opinion they only assert the Shadow or Ghost of a Church upon such Principles as are directly inconsistent with the Fundamental Constitution of all Christian Churches and so have as it were stoln away the Church of England from itself setting up the name against the thing the Idea against the Reality and the Notion against the Practice For the first supposes a Church without Religion the second a Society without Government the third a Government without Governours And what can be more absurd and inconsistent For a Church without Religion is no Church a Society without Government is no Society and a Government that is not lodged somwhere is no Government So that though these Opinions are not equally wicked in themselves the first being open and avowed Atheism yet are they equally destructive to the Fundamental Constitution of the Christian Church as it is a Society founded not by any human Authority but Divine Right With Mr. Hobbs and his Church I shall be very brief because his Notions here as indeed they are every where are no better than gross and palpable Contradictions Neither should I spend much pains upon the second opinion because the absurdity of it is so easily demonstrable from the Nature of Society it self but seeing Mr. Selden a very Learned Person has taken infinite pains in the Argument searched all Authors and all Records to heap together every thing that might serve his cause I shall wait upon him through all the material parts of his Discourse But with the third sort I intend to treat more largely because that is the Church at this present in fashion and is become popular and plausible by the Authority of some Learned men that have owned and asserted it And therefore I shall carefully demonstrate its vanity and falsehood from our Saviours express Institution from the certain practice of the Apostles from all the most undoubted Records of the Church and lastly from the great inconveniences that would unavoidably follow upon it And when we have gained these three Fundamental points we may then and not till then proceed to farther proposals for the true settlement of the Church of England for without them whatever men may talk of it all their Discourse of a Church is no more than a Notion and a Phantasm a Platonick Common-Wealth and a World in the Moon First then as for Mr. Hobbs his Opinion it is scarce worth any mans Confutation because it so plainly confutes itself For what can be more absurd and ridiculous than to make as he does the serious Belief of Religion necessary to the security of Government and yet discover to all those that he would have brought under the Power of this persuasion that it is in reality nothing but an useful and necessary Imposture And yet into this preposterous course of Politicks does Mr. Hobbs suffer himself to be driven by his pedantick Pride and Vanity That though it be above all things necessary to the Empire of our Sovereign Lord Leviathan that the common people be abused with the Belief and scared with the dread of invisible Powers yet lest they should be tempted to think the great Philosopher himself so weak as to be betrayed into the same Opinion he Publishes a Book to all the World to no other purpose beside Flattering the Tyrant Cromwel than to declare that neither himself nor any wise man ought to regard the Tales of Religion and that they are only designed to abuse the ignorant and the silly Just as if this great Statesman should go about to fright Birds from his Corn as he speaks with an empty Doublet an Hat and a crooked Stick but yet lest the Jack-Daws should take him for one of their own silly Flock he should take special care to inform them that himself knows it to be only a man of Clouts This alone is sufficient to discover the vanity and the danger of the Hobbian Religion when it is nothing else but an open Declaration of Atheism and Impiety Though indeed this way of trifling is so natural to Mr. Hobbs that as much as he loves his own Opinions he always contradicts them And this is a plain Demonstration of the Ignorance of the pretenders to Wisdom in this Age that so Inconsistent and Unphilosophical a Writer should obtain so much Credit and Authority among them For though he have a very facetious Wit and is the Author of many pleasant sayings yet he was never Master of one Philosophick Notion But for their conviction I shall challenge them to shew me more incoherent and inconsistent reasonings than are his undoubted and Mathematical Demonstrations against the Being of God and the Principles of Religion First then would you believe that there is a God or not Mr. Hobbs gives you your choice Choose which you please he will demonstrate either by the same Topick Will you have no Deity It is manifest there can be none because there can be no first Mover because nothing can move itself and therefore when men go about to prove a Deity from the succession of Causes and Effects they prove nothing but the necessity of Eternal motion for as it is true that nothing can move itself so is it true that nothing can move any thing else unless itself be first moved Here then the Demonstration is pregnant that there can be no first Cause because nothing can move it self and because all motion is Eternal But will you have a Deity The Demonstration of it is as undeniable For he that from any effect he seeth come to pass should reason to the next and immediate Cause thereof and from thence to the Cause of that Cause and plunge himself profoundly in the pursuit of Causes shall at last come to this that there must be as even the Heathen Philosophers