interessed in common as that the very same performance which is eminently serviceable to one may for that very cause be as eminently disserviceable to the other as when they are in a state of hostility However it is certain that as their interests are very different so the means of serving those interests are very different also and therefore that there is no real consequence that he who has indeed obliged one Society must in doing so oblige all others also § VI BUT the benefits of the Sacraments are such as that he who has them in one Church cannot by him who supposes him to have them there be at the same time supposed to want them in another Regeneration and pardon of sins and a Mystical Vnion with Christ are the designed effects of the Sacraments And it is impossible that he who has these in any one Church can be presumed to want them in another by them who presume he already has them And as no Church can think it in her power to exclude from her Communion those very Persons whom she judges regenerated and pardoned and united to Christ so if she be convinced that these benefits are validly conferred by a Presbyter in another Church she must in reason be obliged to treat them as such in her own Now whether they be validly conferred or not that she is to try by his Ministry If his Ministry be a valid Ministry his Sacraments must be valid Sacraments and actually confer the benefits designed by them to Persons not unqualified to receive them And whether his Ministry be valid or no that is whether he be indeed a Legal Representative of God so as to oblige him to ratifie what is done by himself in his name this being an act of Authority and of Authority visibly administred by men however proceeding originally from God it must be judged the same way as is usually made use of in judging concerning acts of Humane Authority that is by considering the power by which he has received it And because by communicating with the Church of which such a Presbyter is a Member and from whence himself pretends to have received his Authority she plainly acknowledges that that Church has really a power to give him that Authority he pretends to therefore the only way to satisfie her self in this matter is to examine the truth of his pretences whether he has indeed received that Authority he pretends to from those Persons from whom he pretends to have received it Which way of tryal does plainly resolve her judgment in this matter into her correspondency with his Church By that she judges whether his Authority be good and whether he have actually received it § VII 2. THEREFORE Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in which he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them For their duty of correspondence being primarily with Churches and only secondarily with particular Persons as they relate to particular Churches which is particularly true in acts of Authority which cannot be supposed in any particular Person but by derivation from some Church or which is to the same purpose from some Ecclesiastical Person whose act is to be taken for the act of the Church it must follow that the tryal of the pretences of any particular Person to Authority must be by examining his reception of it from the Church And therefore if it cannot appear that he has received any such Authority as he pretends to from that Church wherein he pretends to have received it he is to be presumed not to have it at all and therefore all that he presumes to do on supposition of it must be null and invalid § VIII 3. THE Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders For no other Church can be supposed proper to try him by because the Authority of no other Church can be presumed good antecedently to his being so All the Authority nay the very being of a Church set up by a particular Presbyter must it self depend on the Authority of the Person by whom it is set up If he be no Presbyter such a Congregation cannot be a Church in the sence we mean the word at present and therefore cannot be capable of any Ecclesiastical Authority Whence it will follow that he cannot by any act of such a Church derive Authority if he wanted it before because they can have no Authority but what he brought over to them If he brought none they have none to give him If they had any yet not such as were proper for this purpose both because it is hardly possible that it can be more notorious than that which was at least in time antecedent to it and because at least it cannot be such a Church as other Churches have held correspondence with antecedently to their correspondence with his particular Person and therefore whose Authority might have been presumed to have been granted by them on account of their correspondence with them And there will appear the less reason either that this way of tryal should be right or should be admitted by them because it is against the interests of all Government whatsoever and will justifie the practices of any seditious Person who can be so successful in his seditious practices as to gain himself the reputation of being the Head of a seditious party To be sure the party headed by him will give him all the Authority they are capable of giving him It is their interest to do so at least in the beginnings of disturbances and as it will oblige him to their interests so it will give him greater advantages for promoting those interests effectually And then what Government can think it self secure if it were so easie to justifie seditious practices How can we think that Governments should ever be favourable to Principles so pernicious to the rights of Government in general § IX NOR are these things only true concerning Churches erected by single Presbyters but concerning such also as had whole Presbyteries made up of multitudes of single Presbyters who had been over-voted in their several Presbyteries respectively Especially if they presumed to exercise their Government in the Jurisdiction of another This would also be a precedent as favourable to sedition and as destructive to Government as the other If fugitive over-voted Magistrates of several places may invade the Territories of a Third and there erect themselves into an absolute Senate independent on the Government of the place what security could there be for any Government For can we think that those same Persons who
Religion even all that assurance of the safety of their condition which they are capable of receiving even in the external Solemnities of the Covenant and the application of the external Seals These themselves they may receive if not in the Church from whence they are ejected yet in some other where they may be received upon their ejection who may have as just an Authority to administer the Sacraments as the Church which has ejected them and is no more obliged to stand to the judgment of the Church who has ejected them than she is to stand to hers but is every way as competent a Judg of the qualifications to be required from those who are to be admitted to her own Communion This indeed seems to be the true reason why all the Discipline of particular Churches has been so insignificant since the Catholick has been divided into so many parties who are ready to receive each others Excommunicates They only can be terrified to do their duty who must otherwise be excluded from the Catholick Church to which alone the priviledges of the Church can be thought confined But for avoiding this whatever censures they lye under from particular Churches two excuses are obvious from our Adversaries Principles Either they make the Vnity of the Catholick Church such as that they may be conteined in it who are excluded from the visible Communion of all particulars or if they require visible Communion with some particular Church to Communion with the Catholick yet they have been used to contein under the name of the Catholick Church all the several divided parties those which are Heretical and Schismatical as well as the Orthodox And upon these terms it is impossible for any censures to deprive of the whole visible Communion of the Church As the case stands now the very case of being excommunicated by one Church is a recommendation to others to receive them And if none others would yet it is but the setting up a new Communion of their own which any censured Persons may do with as good right as many others have done before them § X TO this that I may reply I must first freely confess that if it were possible to retein the Vnity of the Catholick Church whilest men are excommunicated out of the particular Churches to which they are more particularly related at least if their exclusion from their particular Churches were not so much as a presumptive exclusion from the Catholick but that excommunicated Members might not only as certainly be but also as certainly assure themselves that they are Members of the Catholick Church as they could before when they were Members of their own particular Church I should then acknowledg that Persons so excommunicate could not have any reason to apprehend themselves to be in any such danger of Salvation as might oblige them to such unsinful condescensions as those are concerning which I have been speaking in order to the avoiding of that danger For it is to be considered that as the whole immediate effect of Excommunication is privative so the deprivations of the benefits of Ecclesiastical Communion do herein differ from the deprivations of Secular censures that the benefits cannot be taken away in one place if they may be enjoyed in another He who is banished from England may really be deprived of all those accommodations which he is intitled to as a Subject of England which is all that the power of England can do to him and which is a real effect of that power And yet at the same time he may enjoy the like or greater accommodations in France because these are capable of being enjoyed by them who are deprived of their English Freedoms The difference of Country is sufficient in this case to afford some places priviledges different from the priviledges of others Put the Spiritual advantages whereof men are deprived by Excommunication the pardon of sin the giving of the Holy Ghost the promises of future and eternal Rewards are things impossible to be enjoyed in one place if they be wanting in another It is God himself that must immediately ratifie them and his power is equally concerned for the Church who has exercised her power of Excommunication as for her who receives the others Excommunicates And therefore if notwithstanding the Excommunication of such Persons they may yet communicate in other Churches and expect that God should confirm to them the benefits of such Vncanonical Communions they must consequently expect that God in doing so must disanul the censures of the Church which has Excommunicated them Which must consequently disoblige all who think so from all condescensions on their part for the recovery of the Communion of which they are deprived § XI AND if Persons Excommunicated in one place may be received in another without so much as the formalities of an absolution to repeal the sentence which has been passed against them nay must never have been presumed to have been cast out of the Communion of the Catholick Church by the Excommunications of their own Church then they must still be supposed to have continued in a state of Pardon and Possession of the Spirit upon performance of the moral conditions of the Gospel And then what effect can their Excommunication be supposed to have upon them that may oblige them to any condescensions in order to an Absolution And therefore that I may settle the Discipline of particular Churches on a solid foundation it will be necessary to shew that the Vnity of particular Churches is in the ordinary constitution of things so inseparable from the Vnity of the Catholick Church as that whoever is cut off designedly from the Vnity of a particular Church however it come to pass whether by his own act or the act of his Superiors cannot at the same time be presumed to retein the Vnity of the Catholick Church Whence it will follow that as I have proved our Brethrens separation to divide them from the Vnity of their particular Churches of which they are Members respectively so it must consequently divide them from the Vnity of the Catholick Church and so be as properly Schismatical in respect of that as it is in respect of their particular Churches But I could wish that they would remember that the reason obliging me to this is the interest of the Discipline of all particular Churches in it and the unpracticableness of that Discipline without it by what form of Government soever it be administred whether Monarchically or Aristocratically or Democratically All who maintein any power of Church censures are as much concerned for it as I am Neither the Presbyterians nor the Independents themselves can ever expect that their censures can oblige any to perform their duty if all they do be only to exclude him from the Ordinances of their own particular Congregations but that notwithstanding he may as validly partake of Ordinances in other Congregations as he did before and be received on as easie terms as if he
such a Separation as denies not only Actual Obedience but the Lawful Jurisdiction of Superiors and withdrawes Subjects from the proper Legal Coercions of such a Society especially if continued in the same Districts where Separation from Government is not intelligible without opposition to it must needs be Schismatical For where there are two Governments not Subordinate there must needs be two Bodies Politick and therefore that Separation which interrupts this Subordination and erects an Independent Government must consequently dissolve this Political Vnity and be Schismatical This therefore being the true ground of this Notion of Schism must be the principal thing requisite to be proved against our Adversaries And whether it be proved directly that the Church is such a Body Politick and it be thence inferred that such a Separation as that I have been speaking of is properly Schismatical or whether the Separation be first proved Schismatical and this Political Vnity of the Church be thence deduced both ways of proceeding will come to the same event § XLII ESPECIALLY considering 2. that though indeed we can by Reason prove it very convinient and avaylable for the Salvation of particular Persons that they be thus confederated into Political Societies yet we cannot prove it so necessary as that Antecedently to all Positive Revelation we might have been able to conclude that God must have thus confederated them For besides the great Presumption and Vncertainty of this way of Arguing what God must have done from what we esteem fit and convenient acknowledged by all Equal Persons in Instances whereof they may be presumed Equal Judges that is when this Argument is produced in favour of Adversaries the Argument is then more especially Weak and Imprudent when the conveniences are no greater than still to leave many things to the determination of Humane Prudence and such they are here and when we can have securer ways of Arguing as none will doubt but that it is much more secure to Enquire what God has actually done from actual Revelation than from our own fallible Conjectures what was fit to have been done by him especially in things so Indifferent and Arbitrary as these are concerning which I am at present discoursing If therefore it may appear that God has actually made the Church a Body Politick it will follow that resistance to Ecclesiastical Governors must be actually comdemned by God as Shismatical and on the contrary if it appear that God has actually condemned Resistance to Ecclesiastical Officers as Schismatical it will also follow that he has made the Church a Body Politick there being no other difference betwixt these two ways of Arguing but that one of them is a priori the other a posteriori but in both of them the Connexion is equally certain from its own rational Evidence § XLIII 3. THEREFORE As this actual Constitution of the Church is most proper to be proved from Scripture so the most satisfactory way of proving it thence will be not only to prove thence the Duty of Obedience to be required from Subjects to their Ecclesiastical Superiors but also to discover from thence the mischief likely to befall Subjects upon their Disobedience For 1. it is in vain to constitute a Government or a Body Politick properly so called without a Coercive Power over its particular refractory Members And therefore if in the Constitution of the Church as established in the Scriptures there appeared nothing Coercive over its particular Members to force them to the performance of their Duty under pain of a greater Prejudice to be incurred by them in case of refusal than that of barely acting irrationally and indecorously this very Omission would make it suspicious that the Duty exacted from them were no more than that Reverential respect which we commonly conceive due to Persons of excellent accomplishments or from whom we have received particular Obligations though they have no Right of Jurisdiction over us but not that Obedience which is properly due to Governours of Societies by virtue of their Offices without any regard to their Personal accomplishments and our Obligations to them So that this real Prejudice which is likely to be incurred by the Subject in Case of Disobedience is very necessary to be discovered from the nature of the Constitution of the Church as it is expressed in the Scripture even in order to the clearing the Nature of the Duty and the extent of the obligation of this Authority § XLIV AND 2. the Church being on this Supposal an External Body Politick its Coercive Power must also be External And therefore though the validity of her Censures be derived from Gods seconding them that is from his remitting or binding in Heaven what she remits or binds on Earth yet this power will indeed be very little Coercive if Gods confirmation be thought easily separable from the Churches Act. For seeing that a Society of this nature cannot imply any External Coercion of the External Act all the Coercion she can pretend to can be no other than a Deprivation of those Priviledges which are enjoyed and may be pretended to by virtue of her visible Membership and an exposing the Person so deprived to all the Calamities consequent to such a Deprivation But if the Confirmation of these censures by God be wholly resolved into the merit of the Cause for which they were inflicted they can never be feared nor consequently prove Coercive to their Subjects who are not convinced of the merit of the Cause it self Which in the event will make them never properly Coercive at all especially in regard of a Government which is acknowledged Fallible as the Church is generally by Protestants For it is to be presumed that all who stand out so obstinately against the Churches Authority as to provoke her Censures either are not or pretend not to be satisfied with the Justice of her Decrees and therefore if their own Judgments may be taken as all the Coerciveness of such Censures as these are which are not Externally Coercive must be derived from the Judgments of the Persons lying under them concerning their validity there can be no hopes of reclaiming them by Censures who are not already such as may be presumed satisfied concerning the Justice of the Cause for which they were inflicted and yet such alone are the proper Objects of Coercive Power § XLV BESIDES those Censures which are supposed only Declarative not Operative are not properly the Acts of Authorized but Skillful Persons for it is Skill not Authority that is a Prudent Presumption that any thing is such as it is Declared and therefore the Opinions of Learned Doctors though but private Persons would in this way of Proceeding be much more formidable than the Peremptory Sentences of Ecclesiastical Governours as they are considered only under that Relation I cannot see how this can be denied by those who conceive the Declaration to be purely-Speculative and to be of no further force for obliging particular Persons than as upon
Though it were possible for such a Person to nourish some hopes yet it is not so easily intelligible how he could rationally enjoy any comfort § VI THIS I am sure seems agreeable to the common sense of mankind and I think I might appeal to the Judgment of our dissenting Brethren themselves concerning it where they are disinteressed It is well known what advantages the Romanists make of the Ingenuity of the Reformed Churches in acknowledging a Possibility of Salvation to particular Persons of their Communion and it is as well known how unreasonable as well as unequal they are thought by Protestants in this way of proceeding And yet there are no Arguments producible by them to prove it unreasonable which may not be applyed to shew the unconclusiveness of our dissenting Brethrens supposal of the security of some persons out of the External Communion of the visible Church to prove the Prudence of their venturing on it For will they say that notwithstanding this Salvability of particular Persons in the Romish Communion yet it is so little to be ascribed to their being of that Communion as that their being so is rather a Prejudice than an Advantage to their Salvation to be rather excused than recommended nay that their danger is so great and the escapes so rare and so incapable to be made out to the comfort of the Person concerned as that not only that Communion cannot Prudently be chosen upon equal terms where a better may be had but that all tolerable terms that is all that are not sinful are rather to be born with than that a better should not be actually obtained And is not this a plain Confession that a bare possibility of Salvation out of the external Communion of the visible Church is not sufficient to excuse them from submitting to all lawful however inconvenient terms of obtaining this external Communion Especially when it may appear that this state of wanting this external Communion is and may be notwithstanding this Argument as prejudicial to Salvation and as dangerous and as rarely escaped and as little capable of administring comfort to the Party concerned as that of Popery And this is as much as I am concerned for at present only to shew the weakness of this Argument from the acknowledged salvability of some particular Persons out of the external Communion of the visible Church to overthrow the necessity of our joyning with it in order to our comfort and assurance of Salvation whence it also appears clearly how little we are concerned to disprove that Salvability § VII I PROCEED therefore 2. To shew farther Positively that for proving this Obligation to enter into the external Communion of a visible Church it is sufficient to shew that without such an external Communion we cannot so well be assured of our Salvation and that this supposition alone of our less security without it is sufficient to prove us obliged to submit to all terms not directly sinful however in-expedient in Order to the procuring this external Communion This will be easy if it be considered 1. That there may be a Rational Obligation in Prudence to secure our own Interests and what may prove conducive thereunto and to avoid such things as may prove prejudicial to them as well as an Authoritative Obligation to submit to the Impositions of any Superiors whatsoever Nay this Rational Obligation is so far from falling short of that which is Authoritative as some less wary persons may conceive as that on the contrary it is the Foundation of all Authoritative Obligation For all Authoritative Sanctions are imposed on Subjects only in vertue of the Rewards and Punishments annexed to them so that as he who undervalues the Rewards and Punishments can have no rational inducement to submit to the Laws so the only Original reason of valuing the rewards and punishments can only be the value of those interests which are concerned in them And as in this regard this kind of Obligation is generally greater than that which is Legal so there cannot be a securer measure for discerning the greater or lesser Obligation of things of this kind than by the greater or lesser momentousness of the Interests concerned in them For as it is certain that lesser Interests ought in Prudence to give way to greater and consequently may be denied in compliance with those Impositions which are necessary to be submitted to in Order to the securing those which are greater so the greatest of all are most Obligatory and can never yield to any Laws whatsoever because no Rewards or Punishments whatsoever can be ever supposed sufficient to countervail them Now this is the Case exactly here there being no other Interest comparable to that of our eternal Salvation § VIII HENCE it will be easy to infer 2. That all terms not directly sinful however in expedient are necessary to be submitted to in Order to the securing this great Interest of our Salvation For as this obligation to secure our greatest Interests in the first place is the first fundamental Principle of all Laws so the second is this That for securing our greater Interests we are in prudence obliged to yield those which are inferior For this is the reason why we are obliged to Laws even contrary to our own humours and interests of lesser concernment because the Interest yielded in obedience to Laws is less than the Interest procured by the rewards and other advantages of the society established by them and because the prejudice incurred by the performance of Duty is less than the Prejudice of the Penalty or of the Dissolution or disturbance of the Society it self Seeing therefore that all terms not sinful are lesser evils than the loss of our Salvation it will follow by this second fundamental Principle of humane Societies that they are all to be yielded as far as such yielding may prove necessary for the security of this But because it is not so much the hazard of our Salvation it self as the hazard of our assurance of it and consequently of our present comfort of it that we can so properly take for granted in our present discourse therefore it will concern us to shew that though our Condition were never so secure in it self yet even the loss of our Assurance that it is so and of that Evidence which is requisite for grounding a prudent rational Assurance is a mischief to us greater than any we can suffer by the most I do not say Imprudent but Oppressive Ecclesiastical Constitutions if they be not sinful Which will therefore by these principles of Obligation oblige us rather to yield to all compliances of this nature than to hazard the loss or considerable diminution even of this Assurance § IX TO this purpose I consider further 3. that this security of greater Interests designed in the practise of this compliance in yielding of lesser is not indeed barely for the securing those Interests in themselves but also and Principally the securing them to
the relief by Extraordinary pretences to Gods Vncovenanted Goodness must needs be rendred more difficult upon the establishment of Ordinaries § VII 1. THE Assurance which can be grounded on this Notion of the Divine Vncovenanted Goodness is not such as may afford a Person concerned any solid comfort for the performance of the things now mentioned I will not in general deny it to be possible that a Man may be actually saved by being actually assisted in the performance of his Duty and actually indulged in the defect◠of that Performance and actually settled in the possession of this reward Nor will I deny that God may actually do this on account of his Natural and Essential Uncovenanted Goodness nay may be presumed frequently to do it where he is not confined in his transactions by Threat◠expresly denounced and clearly promulged against Offenders which besides the obligation on his part from his own Veracity to performance must certainly prove in the Event an exceeding aggravation of their guilt and an incapacity of pardon to them to whom they are so denounced and promulged Not only because God is naturally Arbitrary in the distribution of his Favours and he is not in that Case supposed to have confined himself by any voluntary Obligations but also because the pardonableness of such Persons in their omissions of those Duties which to such Persons are Morally impossible and their good meaning to the uttermost of their Abilities Morally considered may be rational inducements to a Nature so generous and beneficient as God is not only to pardon but reward them Nor will I deny further that even after God has been pleased to provide better for us Ordinarily by admitting us into Covenant with him and by giving us express Revelations yet he may be merciful to particular Persons wanting the Ordinary Means with out any fault of their own that is when they are in a place where they cannot be had at all or where their Fallible Superiors are so unreasonable as that they cannot be admitted to them without Sinful complyances This is a thing so universally acknowledged as that it is not denyed by the Romanists themselves who are the most rigorous Assertors of strict Discipline and blind Obedience who hold Ordinary Superiors generally Fallible and others Fallible at least in matters of Fact of which kind something is generally mixed in most exercises of Ecclesiastical Discipline And I am so sensible that this is an undue deference to Ecclesiastical Powers to make all their Censures even where mistaken and unjustly inflicted to destroy the possibility of the Salvation of such a Person who is not only Innocent of the Crime for which he is censured but is ready to submit to all unsinful Conditions whereby he may recover the Communion he has lost and in the mean time behaves himself Modestly and gives Active Obedience as far as his Conscience will permit him and Passive where it will not as that according to my own Observations in the Introduction § 10.11.12 I shall readily acknowledg those Arguments Fallacious that prove it and shall therefore be wary that my own Arguments be not liable to any such Exception § VIII THAT therefore which I shall at present endeavour shall be only to shew that how much soever Gods Natural Goodness may incline him to do for us yet these general Presumptions concerning it are not so satisfactory to our particular Consciences to assure us of any of the Favours now mentioned barely on that account And consequently cannot Encourage us either easily to presume that God may not be of the mind of our Superiors in matters Disputable or that he will not confirm their censures though mistaken if we do not make use of all the Modesty and Endeavours now mentiond for recovering actual Communion For though it be indeed most certain that God is good and that his Goodness does exceed infinitely that of the best natured Men yet it is withal as certain that he is not Fond and that his Goodness must be reconciled not only with his other Attributes but also the Intrinsick Merit of the thing especially as it may have influence on the Government of the Word and particularly on that of Mankind that is that his Goodness cannot prompt him to do any thing but what on some of these accounts is really reasonable Now in this regard many things may be so pernicious not only in respect of their intrinsick malignity but also of the ill influence of their Example for encouraging others by their Impunity as that even his Goodness may not hinder him from an Obligation to punish them It is certain that in this regard many faults neither otherwise very great in themselves and very pardonable in their Circumstances are yet thought very Necessarily and Justly punishable with great severity as the sleeping of over-watched Sentinels § IX AND considering the Obscurity of many things very requisite in this way for passing an accurate and Impartial Judgment concerning any particular Action and withal considering the weakness of our Faculties either for discerning or judging without Prejudice and Considering that what may indeed be great in regard of Us or that Society for which we are concerned may yet be very little in comparison of the great designs of God for the Universal good of Mankind and on the contrary so that it may be as Just and Obliging for any thing we know to the contrary to destroy whole Nations for the good of Mankind in general as it is confessedly obliging notwithstanding any pretence of the Obligingness of Goodness to pardon to destroy many Criminals for the good of a particular Nation and considering particularly what Liberty our dissenting Brethrens Calvinistical Principles allow God in the actual exercise not only of his Justice but his Soveraign Dominion notwithstanding any Obligingness of his Goodness to the contrary and Lastly considering that the Sin of Schism of which they must prove guilty if by their own faults they are deprived of actual Communion is of that sort which is mischievous to the Publick and for whose Punishment God is therefore more concerned and wherein his Relation of a Governour confines that Liberty he might otherwise have of pardoning it I say all these things being impartially considered it cannot be thought so easy a matter to assure him of his good condition that upon any account soever is deprived of actual Communion as our Brethren conceive it § X SEEING therefore that in these Extraordinary Cases God may with perfect Justice withdraw his Vncovenanted mercies such of them especially as he is not by his Goodness obliged to grant us and Seeing that our Information is so extremely imperfect as that we cannot secure our Selves in these Cases whether his Justice be not only permitted but obliged to the actual infliction of Punishments in which Case it is unreasonable to expect that his Justice should be over ruled by his Goodness and Seeing that his Justice which is infallibly guided by
as Persons Authorized to transact with him in the name of their respective Societies and then to oblige them by virtue of their Covenant to employ their Authority for that design for which it was intended by him when he gave it them So that in this regard they are to be considered as concerned on the part of Mankind on which account I have already shewn the necessity of investing them with such an Authority But considering God as a Governour they will be related to him under that Notion as Subordinate Governours to their principal Head and Original of Authority And so they will be concerned not on Mans part of the Covenant but on Gods so that He will be more immediately concerned in the Duty and respect that is paid to them and consequently the principal Duty Covenanted for on our part being a submission to the Divine Authority and a performance of all his Commands Temporary and Prudential as well as of such as are Eternally Obligatory We cannot perform our Covenant with God without being Dutiful to them because they are invested with his Authority As he is accounted a Rebel against his Prince who resists any of his inferior Officers who are Legally empowered and commissioned by him not only in things for which they have his particular express Warrant but also in such as are to be presumed to have been left to their Prudence to Determine by Virtue of their General Commission § III AND it is no inconsiderable use of this Distinction to observe that Ecclesiastical Governours being invested with a Power of Government in both these respects cannot be accountable to their Subjects as our Independent Brethren would have them Indeed this might have been the Case if they had been considered only as our Representatives and God had withal permitted us to our natural Liberty both to appoint them and to allow them what degree of trust we had pleased For then we might as well have allowed them a limitted power as some Democratical Governments in the like manner derived from the consents of their particular Members have confessedly done And then by the Fundamental Rules of Democracy all Persons being Subject to the Multitude in all such instances wherein they had not been particularly empowered and all power being derived from the Multitude it will follow that if they should presume to transgress the limits allowed them they were still Vsurpers and therefore still Subject and accountable for such misdemeanors to those who had empowered them But if we consider the Multitude as prevented even in this their natural Right of choosing and empowering their Representatives as it is most certain that God may prevent them by virtue of his Authority over them Antecedent to any compacts whatsoever and it is credible that he would if he should think a Government independent on the Subjects most likely to promote the designs of such a Government as this is And much more if we consider them as concerned on Gods part of the Covenant So it will plainly appear that they must derive their Authority wholly from God and therefore can have no other bounds than he is pleased to prescribe them and even in Case of their transgressing these they can be accountable for such Transgressions only to God not to the Multitude from whom as no Authority was in this Case derived so none could be reserved from them which might make the Multitude their competent Superiors So that the nature of this manner of conveyance of Government must make the Governours to whom it is conveyed Absolute and unaccountable at least to any humane Judgment At least if the Multitude would challenge any Jurisdiction this way they ought to derive their claim from the same Original by as clear and express donation from God himself as their Governours do which is not that I know of as much as pretended to And it is a very strong Presumption against them that Ecclesiastical Government was never derived from them that indeed they never were in a condition of doing it The Primitive Converts were never united into a Body Antecedently to their admission into Christianity but were admitted by single persons and successively And such could not even by the Rules of Democracy be supposed to have a power of disposing of the Original inherent Rights of the Multitude Besides it is plain that the first propagators of Christianity Christ himself and the Apostles had a Right of forming a Society independent on the consent of its particular Nembers and their admission of all the first Believers into their Society by Baptism does plainly shew that they acted and owned themselves to act by a power that could not have been derived from them But for proving this I may elsewhere have a more convenient occasion § IV TO return therefore to my Subject from which I have hitherto digressed That God as a Governour is concerned to erect the Church into a Body politick and to appoint Subordinate Governours under himself in Order to the seeing his Will performed This will be easy to understand if it be considered 1. That no Society whatsoever is governable only by general and immutable Laws without particular prudential accommodations to present circumstances both of which must be derived from the same Authority and therefore that there must be also in the Church if it be governed by God as well particular Divine Commands for things which are for the good of it in particular Circumstances as for those which are to immutably and eternally § V THAT 2. God does not appear to declare his Will in these particular Circumstances by particular Extraordinary Revelations And therefore as in other Cases wherein a Prince cannot be consulted with in things belonging to his Authority that is to be presumed to be the Princes pleasure which is proposed as such by his Ordinary Officers and Disobedience to such Injunctions of Ordinary Officers is punished as if it had been committed against the Prince himself so God must also be supposed to have provided for such Cases by that general Power which he must therefore give to Ecclesiastical Officers whom we are therefore accordingly to revere as we would approve our Selves obedient to God himself § VI THAT 3. Besides that general Laws cannot reach all particular Circumstances because indeed what is Good in Circumstances is Evil if considered in general and therefore no way fit to be generally imposed I say besides this even in particulars that are reducible to them they are not sufficient for governing any Society without Officers intrusted with a Power of Authentically expounding them so that Subjects may be obliged to stand to their Decisions and of compelling Subjects to submission in their practice For if Subjects be willing to perform their Duty and able to discern it in all particular Cases there would be no need of Authority But if Authority be supposed necessary and that some Subjects will in all likelyhood prove disingenuous as well as mistaken the
great respect even to their Judgments in the Case whose assistances seem to have been such as that they did as well enlarge their Naturals as well as cultivate them with Supernatural improvements And that this was a Case very likely to have been extant even in the Apostles times I have endeavoured to shew by this account I have given of its Original § IX A second Inference is To let our Brethren see the Insecurity of this way of arguing from mystical Titles to the neglect of external observances I have given several instances of errors which this way of arguing brought several less-discerning Persons into then and which were condemned for Errors by the Apostles themselves and I believe even our Adversaries themselves will not doubt but that they were Erroneous Nay even in the very same places where they find pious Persons called Priests they find them called Kings too Rev. i. 6.v.10 And can they therefore think they may take upon them the Office of Temporal Kings as they do the Office of Priests Will they therefore refuse Subjection to the Ordinances of the State as they do to those of the Church Why may they not as well pretend to have out-grown the Political contrivances to make men vertuous as they pretend to have out-grown the ordinary contrivances of the Church for that purpose Of the two certainly the Provisions of the Church are much more perfect than those of the State and therefore must require much greater Perfection in him who will pretend to have out-grown them and who will also expect to be believed in such his pretences And then what confusion must this bring the world to when they shall by this means have freed themselves from all restraints whatsoever when the worst men who are usually the highest Pretenders shall have this Apology allowed them for all the disorders they can make by this pretended exercise of their Liberty When the Proudest men who have usually the best opinion of their own Perfection shall by this means be allowed to shake off all yokes and Superiorities and to drive on all their arrogant and ambitious designs under this fair pretence of asserting their Christian Liberty § X If to avoid these consequences they tell us with our Saviour that their Kingdom is not of this world St. Joh. xviii 36 why should not they say the same of their Priest-hood too why should they rather be allowed to encroach on the Priest-hood of the World in presuming to administer to themselves those Sacraments whose administration God has only entrusted to the publick Priest-hood or in presuming to free themselves from a dependance on them by pretending that they do not need any thing for which the publick Priest-hood was ordained than to encroach on the Kingdom of the World by presuming on the same pretence either to administer Justice to themselves where they should need it or in excusing themselves from any debt of Duty to their Secular Superiors on pretence that they need not any Protection from them And at present it is perfectly sufficient for my purpose to shew the weakness of these Arguments which are the only ones they can bring for their Assertion and the rather so because it is but reason to expect that all Persons who plead exemption from standing Rules should produce very positive and direct proof that such an exemption was intended by the Legislator so that the proof will be incumbent on them not the disproof on us So that if they fail in their proof of exemption that failure alone is enough to reduce them to the general Rules For it is always rational to presume that all general determinations were designed by the Legislator to include all those who were not expresly exempted by him At least this general Presumption concerning the Legislators mind is much more likely to be approved by himself as agreeable to his own design in making those determinations than these uncertain guesses which these interested Persons make both concerning the singularity of their own Case and the Judgment which the Legislator would have made of it if he had thought himself obliged to take particular notice of it But neither does it only thus appear that the Inference which they would make from these mystical Titles is in the whole kind of it very weak for such a purpose as they produce them for But § XI 3. It plainly appears to have been against the design of the Legislator in the very Case of the Jews from whom the Christians borrowed it I have already observed that this Title was taken from the Old Testament and challenged by the Christians to themselves only on account of their being the true Spiritual Mystical Israel for whom those Promises were more properly designed by God than they were for that Israel who had no better plea to the name of Israel than their carnal extraction However considering that this Title was given primarily to the carnal Israel as a Type at least of the Mystical Israel though intended primarily for the Mystical Israel there is reason to believe that it really belongs to the Mystical Israel in the same sense as it was challenged by the carnal Israel and as it was allowed by God himself who gave it in his dealings with them And therefore if the generality of the carnal Israel at that time did not understand their Mystical Priesthood so as to excuse them from dependance on the Literal Levitical Priesthood and if it be withall certain that God did never intend it so nay was so far from intending it as that he declared his extreme displeasure by most exemplary punishments inflicted on them who made use of this pretence and ventured to put it in practice the same things mud in reason hold as to this priviledg as it is challenged by the Mystical Israelite But that God himself never intended that this use should be made of this Priviledg appears plainly by the now-mentioned instance of Corah who made use of this very pretence for justifying his refusal of Subjection to Aaron and his Sons that all the Congregation was holy Numb xvi 3 whom yet God punished for making that use of it with extraordinary Society though the Persons who pleaded it had an inferior degree even of Holiness of Office which was more than others could pretend to barely on account of that Holiness and Royal Priest-hood which they might challenge on account of their being Israelites And that the holiest among them did not think themselves excused by their Mystical Priest-hood from a dependence on the Levitical Priest-hood nay rather always thought their constant attendance on it one of the most eminent exercises and instances of their Holiness appears from the great expence they were at for maintaining the Temple-Service from the long and chargeable journeys they made at whatsoever distance in the Holy-Land nay very frequently even in the dispersion it self that they might be present at Hierusalem at the times appointed by the
God had been pleased to do for their conviction And their present resisting the Holy Ghost at that time is plainly their perverse behaviour against St. Stephens Preaching Act. vi 8 notwithstanding that also had been confirmed to them by many signs and great Miracles Heb. x. 29 So falling away from the Church Assemblies is in the Author to the Hebrews a doing despite to the Spirit of Grace So St. Paul tells the Thessalonians that he that despised the injunctions of the Apostles of which he had been speaking despised not men 1 Thes. iv 8 but God who had also given them his holy Spirit Therefore he intreats the Ephesians that they would not grieve the holy Spirit by which they had been sealed to the day of Redemption Eph. iv 30. And as this Office of performing Miracles is still ascribed to the Holy Ghost so our Saviour in regard of the Miracles performed by him Act. x. 38 is said to have been anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power which enabled him to heal all those who were under the power of the Devil And so all those who are said to have preached the Gospel with that power with which we see it was preached in the History of the Acts are still described as Persons full of the Holy Ghost Therefore we find so often mention of the demonstration of the Spirit 1 Cor. ii 4 and of the Testimony of the Spirit given to the Gospel which plainly infer that whoever resists the Gospel so demonstrated and testified must necessarily reflect on the wisdom and veracity of the Spirit himself And that these things are so frequently mentioned on all occasions seems plainly to have been with design to give men warning of the greatness and dangerousness of the sin they were likely to prove guilty of in resisting the evidence of the Gospel which was the same that our Saviour had in warning the Jews of it in the Gospels This may suffice to shew in general that a resisting of the Gospel Dispensation is a resisting of the Spirit and that particularly on this first account as it is a resisting of the Miracles done by the Spirit in confirmation of the Gospel § XII A second resisting of the Spirit with which the Jews are also expresly charged was their resisting and murdering the Prophets and particularly with reference to the Gospel in murdering of their Saviour himself This St. Stephen charges on them immediately after the words now mentioned as instances how they had resisted the Holy Ghost and how they still continued to resist him Act. vii 52 Which of the Prophets says he have not your Fathers persecuted and they slew them who foretold of the coming of the Just one of whom you have now been the betrayers and murderers The persecuting therefore and killing of the Prophets was that resisting of the Holy Ghost who had spoken by those Prophets of which their Fathers had been guilty and their own murdering the Just one himself who was also a Prophet Luk. xxiv 19 2 Chro. xxxvi 15 16 17 c. Jorem xxv 4 5 6 7 8 9 c. mighty in word and deed was the instance of their doing like their Fore fathers And this is often taken notice of in the Old Testament as a reason of Gods dealing so severely with their Fore-fathers and of his giving them up at last to those Judgments by which he intended to punish their undutiful behaviour And our Saviour himself takes notice of it as the particular reason why Jerusalem should be destroyed because she had killed the Prophets and stoned them that had been sent to her Matt. xxiii 37 Ver. 34. And among the Prophets he reckons those whom he designed himself to send to them So also in the Parable of the King who let out his Vineyard to the unfaithful Husbandmen he first mentions the several sending of the Servants Matt. xxi 41 Mark xii 9 Luk. xx 16 but when he tells of their murdering the Son there he concludes as the utmost tryal of his Prince's patience and makes him immediately resolve cruelly to destroy those wicked men And this seems also to have been the gradation which was observed by the Author to the Hebrews Heb. i. 1 that whereas God had spoken to their Fore-fathers in sundry times and in divers manners by the Prophets he had now in those last days spoken to them by his Son which they were therefore to look on as the last tryal and which if they neglected they could expect no relief by any other Dispensation nor delay of the threatned vengeance this being the highest degree of provocation This seems exactly to agree with the whole reasoning of that Epistle And it very well agrees with the Notion of the unpardonableness of the sin I am speaking of § XIII BESIDES it is very considerable to this purpose that this sin against the Holy Ghost as he is the Spirit of Prophesie is peculiarly threatned in that Law which is understood to promise a Succession of Prophets For so the words run A A Prophet will I raise unto them out of the midst of their Brethren Deut. xviii 18 19. like unto thee and I will put my words into his mouth that he may speak whatsoever I shall command him And it shall come to pass that whoever shall not hearken unto my words which be shall speak in my name I will require it of him Maimonid Fundam Leg. Cap. ix §. 4. The Punishment here threatned the Jews themselves understand to be a capital one which is as far from any relief or hopes of pardon as any expression used concerning the Punishment of this sin against the Holy Ghost implies that to be But this place will appear yet more apposite to our purpose when it is considered that however a Succession of Prophets may be secondarily implyed yet the words express but one and that one Prophet is as expressly applied in the New Testament Act. iii. 22.vii.37 Abarbin de Pen. Excis to our Saviour And what is here said to be God's requiring it at their hands is there called a destroying out of their People which as it rather implies the Punishment of Excision as they call it which was rather to be expected from God himself than to be inflicted by the Civil Magistrate and as it thereby resembles the Shammatha the turning them over to God's own Judgment at his coming which as I have said was inflicted on desperate Offenders and as it is like the expression of the XII Tables Tull. de Legib. which for the most piacular Offences allotted no other Punishment but this Si secus farit Deus ipse vindex esto so it exactly agrees with the account which the New Testament gives of the Punishment of those who should prove refractory to the Gospel 1 Thes. i. 8 9 ii.8 that they are reserved to that flaming fire in which Christ was to be expected to
of the Spirit on which that right is grounded § XII AND if they would withal consider that the most essential parts of the Office of the Ministry depends on their being representatives of God rather than on their being representatives of the People that this is it that gives Authority to their Preaching that it is the word of God which is preached by them and that they are appointed by God himself to preach that word that this is it which obliges God to perform what they promise in his name that they are Authorized to make those Promises and to make them in his name that this is it which may encourage them to expect those excitations and assistances which accompany the Preaching of the word when it is preached by a lawful Authority that the validity of all they do as Ministers and as Governours of a Body Politick depends on this that they are Authorized by him who has made the Church a Body Politick and endowed it with priviledges that the acceptableness even of their publick solemn Prayers in the name of the Multitude does not so much depend on their being appointed by the Multitude to be their representatives as on their being made by God masters of requests and as the Persons whom he has declared himself pleased particularly to accept If I say they had considered these things certainly they could not have thought themselves to have a right of disposing of the office of the Ministry for their interest in things belonging to that office which are of smaller importance when their interest does so evidently fail in matters of the greatest consequence and which are withal so essential to the office They could not think that because they can easily chuse a Person to Preach and Pray and administer Sacraments for them therefore they could also give them that which might give them Authority for Preaching or make their Prayers acceptable or confer a valid title to the benefits expected by the Sacrament § XIII BUT the reason of their mistakes in these and the like particulars is very plain They have called in question all those benefits which depend on the Divine appointment And when they have thus left them nothing but what they may do though they had no other Authority than what men are able give them it cannot be thought strange that they should think their proceedings valid though ratified only by a Humane Authority Certainly men may Preach and Pray as movingly as to all natural Arts of insinuation they may express themselves as fluently and properly and pronounce as pathetically by their natural endowments without a Divine Authority as others can with a Divine Authority if they want those natural endowments And they may administer the Sacraments with a solemnity as affecting and the Sacraments so administred by them may as naturally resemble the things which they were designed to signifie and all the Devotion which may naturally be derived either from the warmth or fluency of speaking or the gravity of the administration or the natural representation of the Mysteries commemorated in the Sacraments and all the Grace which may be expected by Persons so devoutly disposed as we may suppose the Persons to be of whom we are now speaking and especially which may be expected by them on our Adversaries Principles if the Grace be given either as a natural improvement of those Acts of Devotion on the same natural account as other Acts do naturally either produce or confirm habitual inclinations to the like Acts or purely as rewards in point of generosity without any regard to a promise or a Covenant or a ratification of Persons Authorized or any thing that might oblige God in a Legal way All these benefits I say of these Ministeries may equally be expected from Persons who have no Divine Authority as from those who have And therefore it cannot be admired that Persons who allow no further benefits of their Ministry should think a Humane Authority for the designation of their Persons sufficient for all the effects of their Ministry But if they had but thought how the whole real benefit of their Ministry does depend on the lawfulness of their Call to it and upon the lawfulness of their Call from none other but God himself they must needs have been prompted to another judgment in this matter pursuant to these measures § XIV BUT as none but God can confer the right to the Spiritual benefits here received so neither 2. Can any but he put any in possession of them I shall not now repeat what I have said elsewhere concerning this I only observe it at present to shew that all that men can do in this matter can have no effect that can possibly intitle their actings to the name of Authority when they can neither give the title nor the possession of the benefits conveyed by these Ordinances And though they could have enjoyed possession for a while yet alas what could that signifie for their comfort when they know that righteous judgment will at length prevail And then their past enjoyments will be so far from being reckoned to their advantage as that the Vsurpation of them for a time will be an aggravation of their guilt Their very enjoyment of the Elements themselves will then prove a great mischief if they have enjoyed them sacrilegiously though such an enjoyment was never capable of affording any solid advantage All that I would therefore infer at present is that all the Authority which any Creature can pretend to in a matter of this nature must be derived from God and derived from him by a positive and express donation or by that contrivance of things under the state of the Gospel which he has been pleased actually to observe Which will oblige all who are desirous to inform themselves solidly herein rather to enquire into the establishments of God than to trust their own conjectural reasonings concerning them antecedently to Revelation what they think fit to have been observed by him and what they think themselves would have done if they had had the management of his design § XV 2. Therefore I proceed to consider the actual establishment of God to shew that as the Multitude cannot challenge this right of administring the Sacraments by any Original inherent right so neither can they by any actual donation And this is so plain as that our Adversaries themselves do not that I know of pretend to any Text where any such a gift is expresly mentioned How will they therefore pretend otherwise to know Gods mind in such a thing as this is which so intirely depends on his arbitrary pleasure Will they plead primitive precedent for it But we never find our Saviour pleading any Authority though strictly examined by the Jews concerning his Authority besides that of his Father Joh. xx 21 And as his Father sent him so he sent his Apostles who are always described as Persons sent by God himself not by any Humane Authority So
they are said neither to have been of men nor by men Gal. i. 1 Eph. iv 11 2 Cor. v. 20 They are reckoned among the gifts of Christ upon his ascending up on high They are called Embassadors for God and in Christs stead And it has always been reckoned among the Prerogatives of Majesty to have the sending of his own Embassadors Nay it was counted so peculiar a property of an Apostle to be sent by God himself as that St. Paul insists on it as an Argument to vindicate his own Apostleship against the false Apostles who quarelled at it Gal. i. 11 12. 1 Cor. ix 1 that he had received nothing from the other Apostles themselves and that himself had seen our Lord that he might receive his Authority from him Thus far therefore there appears no Precedent of any Authority either received from the Multitude or given to the Multitude by Christ himself who as yet alone had power to give it § XVI NOR do I think that our Adversaries themselves will pretend that the Apostles received their Authority from the People Yet so unwary they are in their arguing for the Authority of the People as that they produce such Proofs as must conclude this if any thing If the Peoples Expostulation with St. Peter concerning his baptizing of Cornelius had been an Act of proper Jurisdiction it must have been an exercise of Jurisdiction over St. Peter himself And if so they must in reason be supposed to have had some power of punishing him either by deposing him from his office or by suspending him from the exercise of it or at least by Authoritative withdrawing from him yet so as still to continue in the same good condition wherein they were before which can hardly be understood without a weakening of his Apostolical office For no proper Jurisdiction can be understood without a proportionably proper power of inflicting punishment in case of misdemeanour And if they will not own this that the People had a Power over the Apostles they must at least let go all their proofs which prove this if they prove any thing Which will extremely streighten them in their pretended Scripture Precedents For where-ever they find the People doing any thing without the Apostles which is the only Case wherein they could shew the proper extent of their own Authority they will find the Apostles themselves concerned which must therefore oblige them to understand such actings not to have been by way of Jurisdiction but of Expostulation § XVII WHEN was it therefore that this Authority was given to the Multitude By whom was it given to them who had a just Power of giving it them Was it afterwards given them by the Apostles who had hitherto held it independently of them If so it were well our Brethren would remember to insist only on such Proofs as are later than the date wherein they think it was given them and on such Proofs which speak more home to their design than those which are antienter than those times wherein themselves conceive this conveyance to have been made and which they must therefore acknowledg unconclusive But so far were the Apostles from giving away that Power to the Multitude which they had never received from them as that we find generally the Ordinations mentioned in the Scriptures performed either by themselves or by Persons Authorized as themselves were either by God himself or by them not by the People Tit. i. 5 Act. xiv 23 Act. vi They ordeined Elders in every City By them the order of Deacons was instituted and the Persons promoted to the Order They visited whole Countries and settled and confirmed the Churches they constituted what Officers and gave them what degrees and prescribed what Rules of Government they pleased according to their own Prudence and the suggestions of the Holy Ghost without consulting the Authority of any others which they could not have done if they had either acknowledged any self originated Power in the People or immediately given them that power which themselves had received immediately from God It cannot possibly be understood how the Rules of a Democratical Government could ever have permitted them to act so arbitrarily as it is plain they did in those first beginnings of Christianity § XVIII THERE were indeed many prudent reasons proper for those times which might prevail with the Apostles to desire the Peoples consent in the administration of their Government though the obliging validity of what was done had not depended on their Authority The Church was then a Body linked together only by an awe of Conscience not by any other external coercion And though now that the truth of Christianity and the Authority of the Apostles are sufficiently confirmed all are obliged to submit to the Rules prescribed by them as they would secure their happiness which will not leave them to that Liberty nor consequently intitle them to that right in the Government before they submit to it as our Brethren fancy yet before this conviction had prevailed on the minds of men it could not have been prudent for them to exercise the utmost extent of that Authority which did really belong to them Our Adversaries themselves will at least acknowledg the Apostles to have been infallible whence it will follow that their word alone ought to have been taken in Controversies then started at least where there appeared not evident reason to the contrary But we plainly find that even themselves durst not venture their Authority on so hard a tryal Even in probable things we do not find that they required their Auditors assent without such reasons as the matter would afford that is at least without probable ones And generally we find them so laying the stress of their persuasion on those reasons as if their Authority had been no reason at all Therefore in the Controversie concerning Circumcision Act. xv the Elders and the Multitude convened together with the Apostles to give their judgment concerning it and that in a Case which was to be decided by the Holy Ghost But what need had there been of all that trouble if the Apostles Authority alone had been sufficient for this decision The Holy Ghost spoke by the Apostles alone And could the whole Synod after all their diligence in enquiring and debating the Truth in that matter pretend to any greater Authority Was it likely that the ordinary Presbyters much more that the Laity themselves should have had any thing revealed to them which had been concealed from the very Apostles But we find the whole matter debated by reasons and rational applications of the Mystical sense of the Old Testament as if no new revelation had been pretended § XIX THE like might have been observed from the debates with St. Peter concerning his Preaching to Cornelius and with St. Paul concerning his Preaching against the obligation of the Ceremonial Law The lawfulness of Preaching to the Gentiles and of forbearing the externals of the Law were
from the provisional constitutions of the standing Government especially where they confirmed their Mission by signs as these generally did but also from most of the commands of the Law it self I do not know whether any command was excepted save that of Idolatry and the perpetual obligation of their Law and every precept of it Otherwise a Prophet might require the breach of any one precept that of Idolatry excepted so it were but for a time and this seems to have been the sense of the Jews of that Age if we may trust the modern Jews for the sense of their Ancestors Maimonid Fund Leg. c. 9. And I need not warn how much the new Converts to Christianity were then generally possessed with the Notions of the Jews whom they had deserted § XXIII ACCORDINGLY we find those strange disorders intimated in the first Epistle to the Corinthians which the Apostles were at length necessitated to reform by the exercise of Government but it was late before they attempted it not till the disorders grew intolerable and then they proceeded by slow degrees so hard it was to prevail on the contrary pretensions When St. Pauls first Epistle to the Corinthians was written many of the Prophets spoke at the same time as it should seem the Apostles and their companions did on the day of Pentecost the Women also prophesied and that publickly in the Church and they who had the gift of Tongues exercised it in the publick also without Interpeters and behaved themselves so extravagantly as that the Apostle himself tells them that an unbeliever coming among them would think them all mad These notorious and great disorders in their Synaxes make me apt to think that at that time at least they had no visible Government at all among them Which conjecture seems methinks the more likely because the Apostle in the address of this Epistle takes no notice of the Bishops and Deacons as he does elsewhere where there were any and as it was the general custom of those times in writing to Bodies to make their address particularly to the heads of the Bodies where there were such and because he blames the Corinthians for not mourning that the incestuous Person might be taken from among them which they needed not to have done if themselves had power of exercising Discipline upon him and because he expresly empowers them to meet together with his Spirit both for the Excommunication and Absolution of the incestuous Corinthian and ratifies their proceedings in that matter with his own approbation that to whomsoever they forgave any thing he forgave it also § XXIV AND therefore when the celebration of the Eucharist is mentioned among them I am to suspect that it was not performed by ordinary Presbyters but by Persons extraordinarily inspired who undertook that part of the Ecclesiastical Office as they did others also by vertue of this extraordinary Call This I take to be the meaning of the Apostle in the xivth Chapter 1 Cor. xiv 16 Otherwise when thou blessest with the Spirit how shall he that supplieth the place of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks Apol. 2. Matt. xxv◠26 Mark xiv 22 Luk. xxii 19 1 Cor. xi 24 Matt. xxvi 27 Mark xiv 23 1 Cor. x. 16 The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was in Justin Martyrs time a term of Art for this Sacrament and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or blessing is used Synonymously with it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Matthew and St. Mark is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Luke and St. Paul and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Matthew and St. Mark is expressed by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Paul And in Justins time Amen was answered in that Office by the People just as we here find that it was answered by him that supplied the place of the unlearned And by the expectation of this answer of the People to it and by the other offices with which it was joyned it seems rather to have been a part of the Ecclesiastical office than otherwise If it had not been part of the Ecclesiastical Office how had the unlearned been obliged to say Amen to it How had he been obliged to use an Interpreter in it for the edification of the Church For that the Apostle seems plainly to mean in that whole Chapter by doing any thing in the Spirit the doing the same thing in an unknown tongue which they who were supposed to do it without the Spirit did in a tongue commonly understood Thus it is most accurately opposed to the doing a thing with understanding § XXV NOR did this reason hold only for hindring the exercise of Government where there was no other settlement but these occasional extraordinary Dictates of the Spirit to uncertain Members but even after the settlement of certain known Ecclesiastical Officers It is certain that this same Church of Corinth had such Officers when St. Clement wrote his Epistle to them And yet even then they who were guilty of the Schism which occasioned his writing that Epistle were encouraged to resist their Superiors by their pretensions to these gifts and that notwithstanding the Apostle himself had so long before warned them of the obligation of such Persons themselves to submit to order and the constitution of Officers among them had plainly enough signified his mind that he intended them for Judges of those Rules which were requisite for order At least this reason of condescension lasted so long if not as these gifts lasted yet till the Apostles Authority was generally received without control and till the Apostles had declared their judgments expresly in this matter that even these extraordinary gifts should be under the restraint of the ordinary Governours of the Church and till this their declaration had reached the cognizance of the whole Church universally and till men had withal some respite given them for wearing out gradually their preconceived opinions to the contrary as we find that Rule of Prudence generally observed by the Apostles to allow them respit in such Cases These reasons will at least concern those times of which the Scripture History gives us an account and will therefore concern all the Text by them insisted on in those times § XXVI I HAVE the rather particularized all these reasons of condescension in those times that our Brethren may understand the unreasonableness of the way they have hitherto insisted on for knowing the original extent of Ecclesiastical Authority For if the Apostles were of themselves so careful to condescend to the weaknesses of their new Converts if withal there were then so many reasonble inducements to perswade them to this condescension it must then be reasonable to expect that their actual practice must have fallen short of their just right and therefore that their way of arguing from the non-appearance of a precedent then to deny a right now is in it self extremely weak though we had all the Records
have received no Power at all Which in reference to Subjects already under Government will disoblige such Subjects from Submission to them and will consequently make their Authority as unpracticable antecedently to this approbation of the ordinary Governours as if they had none antecedently And because it is not probable by the Principles of Government that God would give an Authority that should be useless and unpracticable as to all the proper uses of Authority this will also make it suspicious that God does not indeed give this Authority it self antecedently to the approbation of ordinary Superiors Especially considering that though these ordinary fallible Superiors should be mistaken in thinking such Persons not Authorized when really they are so yet still their Authority must continue unpracticable by these Principles and that for ever if ordinary Superiors should for ever continue in their mistakes § XV THIS I note against the Opinion of a very ingenious and candid Person who conceives that the Authority is grounded on those gifts of the Spirit which he supposes to be in Persons antecedently to Ordination Mr. Humphreys and which he therefore conceives not given but approved by their Ordeiners so that according to this Hypothesis Ordination does not give this Power but only declares that they have it and gives them a liberty to exercise it within the Jurisdiction of the Ordeiners without which himself conceives it irreconcilable with any Order or Discipline that they should be permitted to exercise their gifts within those Jurisdictions and is sensible how impossible it is to secure the Church from the mischiefs which may be occasioned by the pretences of assuming Enthusiasts if Subjects may be allowed immediately to judg of their gifts and to receive them as the measures of their Practice antecedently to the declaration of their ordinary Superiors If this were true it would indeed follow that Acts of this Authority would indeed be valid before God antecedently to the Declarations of ordinary Superiors and even after them contrary to the Declarations of fallible Superiors in case they should prove actually mistaken which is no hard supposition concerning Superiors who are acknowledged fallible especially in their Declarations concerning things which are true or false antecedently to their Declarations though they might be obnoxious to Canonical Penalties for exercising their gifts antecedently to this Canonical approbation § XVI BUT in reference to Practice the Question will not be what is really valid before God but what may be known to be valid by men And if men presume that to be invalid which is really valid they cannot look on any thing done by them as valid whilest they are supposed to doubt of the validity of the Authority by which it is done And if Subjects be obliged to stand to the judgment of ordinary Superiors concerning the validity of the Authority to which men pretend it plainly follows that even where their Superiors are actually mistaken in judging Persons to have no Authority who really have it yet Subjects must in that Case presume they have none at least presume so in reference to Practice Which will as much discourage them from joining in Communion with such Persons disapproved by Superiors and will consequently oblige them to as near a dependence on Superiors for the practicableness of their Authority as if they had really received it from them which presumed invalidity is sufficient for all that I am concerned for in this Question Besides the unpracticableness of such an Authority independently on Superiors I have shewn to be a great and prudent Presumption from the Principles of Government that no such Authority is given independently on Superiors § XVII BUT 2. Our Brethren must be obliged in equity to grant this Negative way of arguing that men cannot be supposed to have an Authority from God which they cannot shew their title to by the mediation of ordinary Superiors because they cannot pitch on a more certain way of proving that such Persons have received Authority from God than that they have received it from them who were at first Authorized by God and Authorized to give their Authority I cannot conceive how such Persons can pretend to come by their Authority from God otherwise than either that they must have received it from him immediately or that they must have received it from him mediately with dependence on the Scriptures But neither of these Pretences can satisfie others or prevent the mischiefs which may follow from false pretences which I have shewn how much it is the common interest of all Governments of what nature soever to have prevented § XVIII 1. THEN They cannot pretend to receive their Authority from God immediately For they neither can give any solid reason for satisfying themselves that God will call any immediately in these modern Ages much less that they in particular are so called by him nor much less can they satisfie others that they are called God has never promised that he will call any in such an extraordinary way in these modern Ages nor have we any reason to believe that he ever intended it All the extraordinary manifestations which alone made these extraordinary Calls seasonable and useful all confess to have been long since discontinued And it is no way likely that he would continue his extraordinary Calls without his extraordinary manifestations without which they must be so useless And if it neither appear in general that God has actually promised it nor that it is probable that he would ever have intended it how can they satisfie themselves that they in particular are however actually called by him Will they or can they say that God has spoken to them immediately No doubt some Enthusiasts will say so But it is sufficient for my purpose if this cannot be said without Enthusiasm § XIX AND if they will avoid this charge let them consider the differences made between true Prophets and Enthusiasts the secret evidences not only of the Revelations themselves but also of their proceeding from God which appeared to the Prophets themselves either those that are mentioned by the Jews or any others that may be rational Let them consider how dangerous it must prove to themselves as well as others seduced by them if they should prove mistaken how highly responsible they must be to God if they run in his name when they are not sent by him and whether the evidence of their Mission be great enough either to prevent or countervail that danger Let them judg themselves in this particular with the same severity wherewith they would judg others who would pretend Authority for messages contrary to their own and with the same wherewith they must expect to be judged by God if they should prove mistaken and I am confident they will find the evidence necessary for satisfying them in this particular not only much greater than they have but also than they can rationally expect in this present Age. Nay if they would consider how
particular Governours This therefore cannot be founded on the Authority of particular Governours whose Authority is wholly grounded on it but only on the Authority of God whose Authority alone is antecedent to the Authorities of particular Jurisdictions § XII NOR can this be thought strange in Ecclesiastical Government which is so acknowledged in Civils There are also in them some Laws of the like universal concernment on which the right of all Civil Jurisdictions depend and which are therefore as impossible to be derived from the Authority of particular Governours and as necessary to be derived from God alone Such are the Laws of Nature and of Nations the breach whereof has by all wise men been always thought most piacular and most properly obnoxious to the punishment of God himself Which is a consideration very worthy to be laid to heart by our dissenting Brethren whether it be not equally applicable to this present Subject concerning the right of particular Jurisdictions And if this be acknowledged to be the truth of this matter that the Divine Authority is thus resisted by this disobedience to Humane Jurisdictions what can more agreeably be expected as the punishment of such resistance than that they who are guilty of such resistance by any acknowledgment of a power independent on the Governours of their Jurisdictions should at least lose the advantages they might otherwise expect from the Society to which they joyn themselves I mean those advantages which might otherwise be expected from a conjunction with them considered as a Society especially such advantages as are only to be immediately performed by God whom they must by these Principles be supposed to have disobliged Which will make it reasonable to believe that the Sacraments received against the Authority of these Jurisdictions shall not actually have the benefit of Sacraments and therefore shall not actually contribute to the forgiveness of sins or the giving of the Holy Ghost the way whereby Sacraments are supposed to contribute to them Nay instead of that such communications will incur the guilt of Sacriledg on the same account as Corah and his company were guilty of it though they were consecrated Persons for transgressing the bounds allowed them by the order prescribed by God But how much more must it be so when Persons not having any Consecration at all shall presume to encroach on those sacred rights of their own Superiors which God himself who gave them those rights does hence appear obliged to preserve inviolable § XIII AND indeed I do not understand how the Presbyterians can with any shew of reason defend their own practice of Authority without acknowledging this right of Jurisdictions How can they justifie the Authority of their National and Provincial Synods over all those who live within the Province or Nation represented in the Synods How can they challenge it even over the Independents themselves who live among them notwithstanding their profession of a different Judgment from them notwithstanding their disowning any act whereby they have obliged themselves to submit to their Authority distinct from the Baptism which they have received among them How can they have the confidence to charge even them with Schism for refusing to submit to them or for gathering Churches out of their Parishes if the living within the districts of a Parish could give them no peculiar title to those who did so What can they call this right they pretend to over Persons living within their districts antecedently to any act of their own distinct from their Baptism if it be not Jurisdiction For my part I profess I mean no more at present nor am I sensible that my cause obliges me to mean any more And can they allow of Jurisdiction in Parishes only and not in those greater Bodies which are only Aggregates of Parishes The Authority they challenge to their Provincial and National Synods does plainly shew they cannot do so And how can they possibly deny the same right and reason of Jurisdiction to the Parishes and Diocesses wherein their first Predecessors were baptized How can they think the same Episcopal Jurisdiction any more impaired by their own irregular practices since than they think their own Jurisdiction impaired by the like irregular practices of the Independents They who acknowledg a right over particular Christians antecedently to their own act as these generally do when they speak consequently to their own Principles must needs acknowledg that the power so antecedent to private suffrages may constitute what rules they please for distinguishing the limits of the proportion of particular Governours So that such Persons cannot with any shew of reason doubt of the obligingness of such rules of Jurisdiction when they are once established but only whether this particular rule of judging by the districts of place be established by that antecedent Power But of this there can be no doubt in our present case because there is no other way so much as pretended by our Adversaries themselves for distinguishing the limits of particular Jurisdictions § XIV BUT I proceed to shew 2. How the same thing may be proved against them who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedent to the voluntary Obligations of particular Persons I have already observed how much more consequently these men speak to their Principles than the Presbyterians And it is indeed impossible that these men should own the Authority of Jurisdictions if they will be true to their Principles But then the great reason why it is impossible is particularly that Principle and the consequences of it that they think the obligatory right of all Ecclesiastical power derived from the particular Personal consent of every particular Member and that distinct from his consent to be a Member that is from his consent to Baptism If this be overthrown then the reasons will return which I have urged against those who grant a power in the Church obligatory of all baptized Persons living among them antecedently to their personal Contracts For there is no middle way of dealing in this case They who disown the Original of power to be seated in the people if they own any Ecclesiastical power at all they must needs place it originally in the Governours No third seat can or that I know of has been ever thought of And if it be originally in the Governours then it must be there antecedently to the consent of particular private persons and being so must also oblige antecedently to their consent for it is a contradiction to speak of power without obligation And if so then whoever is a Member of the Church is a Subject of its Government and whoever is a Member of the visible Church is by the same reason a Subject of its visible Government But none can deny that it is the visible Church as well as the invisible of which Baptism makes us Members nay many of our Adversaries especially will say that it is the visible Church rather than the invisible Whence it will follow that none who
conscience especially they who urge it in that extravagant sence in which some seem to mean it and more are obliged to mean it by the interest of their reasonings § XXI AND yet 2. This power must not be so confined to the conscience but that it may also have a secondary influence on the external actions of men to oblige them to perform such external duties upon account of conscience which they might otherwise have been unwilling to have performed of themselves For unless this Obligation of conscience have an influence on the external actions it can be of no use for the external Government we are speaking of whose Subjects are men who are not capable of being edified by our thoughts any farther than as they are signified to them by our actions and it is administred by men who cannot judg of the Observation of their own injunctions otherwise than by our external actions in order to the rewarding the obedient or punishing the disobedient and indeed for whose ends only external actions are useful as was already observed And yet they must not only be those external actions to which their own prudence would oblige them for their own intrinsick usefulness but also such wherein Subjects may differ from the judgment of their Superiors that they must be obliged in conscience to observe in order to the ends of Government For no Government whatsoever is capable of being administred by fallible Persons unless their Subjects conceive themselves obliged to submit to them even in such cases wherein they should believe them actually mistaken in point of prudence for the generality of moral affairs and especially the prudential commands of Governours are not capable of any more than probable evidence and in such cases it is very possible for such Governours to be really mistaken and for Subjects to believe them mistaken and yet if they be not observed even in such cases other instances are so very rare as that their Government it self must prove in a great measure useless and unpracticable for without a coercive power over Subjects no Government properly so called can be mainteined and there can be no coercion if Subjects be permitted to do only what they think fit themselves § XXII AND 3. These Impressions of conscience must be such as may oblige them not only to perform such external actions as otherwise they would not if they had been left to their own liberty but also to perform such actions in compliance to visible Superiors So that in order to the mainteining the Authority of this Government on their consciences it is requisite that the Authority commanding be judged to be a reason obliging them in conscience to perform whatsoever is so commanded and that these visible Superiors are to be taken for authentick Judges of their obedience or disobedience so that though they may not always be obliged to believe their Judgments concerning their own behaviour true yet they must always externally acquiesce in their determinations believing themselves obliged in conscience to give them active obedience in things lawful and passive in things that are not so For external Authority cannot be mainteined over the conscience without an obligation even in conscience to obedience and the act cannot be obedience if it be not performed for the sake of the Authority requiring it and no obedience short of this now mentioned can reach the ends of a visible external Authority And therefore it must needs be extremely vain for them to think to satisfie their consciences of their obedience by appealing from their Governours to God as the Judg of their consciences This were indeed an acknowledgment of the Authority of God if God had instituted no external Sociâ—ty of men But having done so it is plainly a refusal of their duty to their Ecclesiastical Superiors when their Authority is not admitted neither for its own sake nor as an authentick Expositor of the mind of God as the reason of their actions but the Divine Authority is appealed to independently on them and plainly a resisting of the Divine Authority as vested in them as God has required that they should be obeyed for his sake and as by leaving no remedy for Appellants in this World wherein alone it is that this Authority can be useful he has sufficiently intimated it to be his pleasure that their Authority should be unappealable here in order to the forementioned obedience § XXIII AND 4. This Authority over conscience must be such as may awe even wicked men themselves who are not altogether of a profligate and feared consâ—ience And therefore the mischief attending disobedience must be very great as it must needs be that it may by them be conceived sufficient to oversway the mischief they apprehend in wanting the gratification of their vicious appetites and very clear and unobnoxious to disputes on the acknowledged Principles of Christianity that it may be owned for such even by them who are so strongly interested and therefore prejudiced against it For wicked men are they who constitute the greatest part of all great Societies and it is principally for them that all coercive Government is settled not only that men of different Judgments but also of different affections may be necessitated to an external compliance Now in order to the establishing such a Government as this what can be more conducive or more becoming the Divine Wisdom than this Systeme of Principles on which I have been hitherto insisting § XXIV FOR it is certain 1. That they cannot oblige their Subjects thus in conscience to comply with them against their wills unless there were some benefit to their consciences to be gained by their obedience and some prejudice also to their consciences to be incurred by their disobedience Possibly some few good Subjects might be moved by the command of God and the general indefinite expectation of rewards from his good will or punishments from his displeasure as some few good Subjects would be moved by those constitutions of their Prince which were ratified by no other penalty than that of his displeasure But as in seculars this is very rarely found sufficient in experience for the Government of great Communities without specification of the immediate reward or punishment which should attend their obedience or disobedience to particular commands so it will be as necessary to observe this same method for a Government of this nature even in Spirituals For the nature of those Persons who are apt to transgress is usually so dull as not to be very apprehensive of spiritual and future inconveniences if there be not something particularly to be feared at present upon the neglect of their duty some advantage to their consciences that may even at present prove more considerable to them than the pleasure of their sins and some disadvantages of the same kind that may at present oversway the loss of their sinful pleasures and the contradiction of their appetites in such performance of their duty § XXV AND 2.
a due respect to Governours is a Consideration so principal in this kind of performances as may make amends for any mistakes in the Expediency of particular Impositions Nay I might have shewn that the great Ends of publick Edification might on these Supposals have been as effectually promoted in many mistaken Impositions as if there had been no mistake at all And where the mistake is so no way dangerous where it has so very little if any influence on that which alone in the estimation of Equal Persons makes the Practice commendable nay where Disobedience is certainly a greater Evil than can be feared from any mistake in the Imposition it self what imaginable reason is there why we should be refractory § XXIV BESIDES the mistake if any were belong's not to our Province and consequently cannot be imputable to Vs but our Superiors And though the mistake were chargeable on us as an Imprudence yet how can it be reputed as a Sin Especially considering that it neither involves us in the violation of any of the Divine Commandments nor even in a sinful violation of the Moral Obligation of Prudence it self For can they think all our less discreet Actions to be Formal Sins on account of their being so Or can it be a Sinful violation of the Law of Prudence it self to do that which is not so serviceable to its immediate end with a design upon a greater And is not that the Case exactly here Is not the preservation of the Churches Peace by a complyance with less Prudent Impositions a more considerable End than the Edification of particular Persons by the suitableness of every particular Ceremony Will themselves think it agreeable to the Laws of Christian Prudence sometimes to comply with the weakness nay with the humoursomness of well-meaning Brethren whom they think mistaken And can they think the same condescention Sinful and Imprudent only when it connives at the equally-pardonable mistakes of a Lawful Authority If these Presumptions be not sufficient for Governours to exert their Authority over Refractory Subjects that either the matters themselves are of so little concernment as that the Consciences of their Subjects cannot be reasonably prejudiced by any mistakes concerning them or if otherwise that the native Evidence of the things is sufficient to satisfie all Inquisitive well-meaning Persons I confess I do not see how they can avoid making the Duty of Governours intricate and unpracticable which certainly is to make it otherwise than God has made it And if Governours acting bona fide on these Presumptions must necessarily interfere with the Consciences of the generality of their well-meaning and Inquisitive Subjects as I think it follows unavoidably from our dissenting Brethrens Principles this methinks would be sufficient to discover the Falshood of them For certainly the Catholick Peace of the Church as a Body Politick is Fundamentally grounded on this reconcileableness of the Duty of well-meaning Conscientious Governours with the Duty of the generality of their well-meaning Conscientious Subjects and therefore those Principles which hinder the possibility of reconciling them must on that very account remain convicted of being False as well as Vnpeaceable § XXV AND if our Brethren do not allow this power to the Governours of their own Parties why do they Censure or separate from Dissenters from themselves If they do how can they excuse themselves for separating from their own Governours at first and giving others a Precedent by them unanswerable I am confident their own Doctrines and Decrees are not in many Cases capable of higher Evidence than ours as little clear from express Scripture or any obvious Consequence deduced from it and according to the sense of any Judicious impartial Person as liable to mistake If therefore notwithstanding this they think their Proof sufficient to ground a Presumption of their Ingenuity even in Persons dissenting from them I do not understand any disparity why they should not admit the like Presumption for our Ecclesiastical Governours § XXVI I KNOW there is a complaint taken up by some of our modern Adversaries that we misrepresent them as often as we tell them that they break off Communion with the Church of which they were Members for things Indifferent Nor do I conceive it necessary on this occasion to convince them of their mistake and our own Fidelity by references to their own more ancient and famous Authors For my part I do not think that there is any real difference betwixt even them and their Predecessors but only in a misunderstanding of the Notion of Indifferency that is ascribed to such Impositions of their Superiors For if by Indifferency be meant an Indifferency in the Circumstances of Practice after they are Imposed we are so far from thinking that they believe them thus Indifferent as that we our Selves do not believe them so nor consequently have we here that ordinary occasion of such mistakes of ascribing our own Sentiments to them We our Selves believe them as Necessary to be done when they are commanded by our Lawful Superiors as they believe them Necessary to be omitted The Indifferency therefore which we our Selves believe to be in them and wherein we believe our Brethren also to be of our mind is in the nature of the things themselves antecedently to the determination of ordinary Ecclesiastical Superiors § XXVII AND if they do not believe them Indifferent in this sense why do they insist on the same Arguments with their Predecessors concerning Christian Liberty and the Perfection of the Scriptures For can they pretend Christian Liberty in such Instances wherein Christ himself has imposed on their Liberty Or do they think that the Scriptures taking no notice of a thing is sufficient not only to make the thing so omitted unlawful to be Imposed but unlawful also to be Practiced § XXVIII THIS acknowledged Indifferency therefore of the things Antecedently to the Interposition of Ecclesiastical Authority is the thing we conceive them to believe And their belief that the things are thus Indifferent Antecedently to Ecclesiastical Authority and yet are Vnlawful when Authority has interposed this I say we conceive perfectly destructive of such Authority For by this means such Authority can never oblige us to do any thing for its own sake when its interposition in a thing otherwise Lawful in it self is conceived sufficient to make it Vnlawful For it cannot be discerned what is done for the sake of this Authority but only in such instances where no other reason of doing a thing can be pretended If therefore nothing be done for it it cannot be conceived to have any obligation of its own which if it have not it is impossible it should be owned as an Authority § XXIX AS for the Authority of proposing Divine Laws obligatory Antecedently to their Proposal besides that when it comes to Practice it will not be found very significant with our Brethren when every private Person among them is permitted to Judg so freely for himself
and so freely to practice according to his own Judgment however different from that of these Authoritative Proposers of the Divine Pleasure to him I say besides this the Authority thus acknowledged is not confined to the Office or Jurisdiction but is wholly grounded on the Personal skill of the Persons Authorized and consequently is not the Authority of a Body Politick so that at least this is utterly subverted by these Principles and Practices of our Brethren which is all that I am concerned for at present This therefore may suffice at present to shew the inconsistency of these Principles and Practices of our Brethren with Catholick Peace because I am desirous to hasten to my principal design § XXX I PROCEED therefore to shew that my present undertaking is not unsuitable to the Person I am here desirous to observe viz. that of a Peace-maker This is the rather fit to be taken notice of because it is conceived that the Apostles Precedent in that great Dispute concerning eating things offered to Idols does oblige Peace-makers to avoid maintaining either side of such disputed Propositions or abetting either Party So the Apostle advises even them Rom. XIV VIII whose better informed Consciences were sufficiently convinced of the Indifferency of such meats in regard of themselves to yield their own Right rather than offend their weaker Brethren who might take their eating them for an honour to the Idol and might be tempted not only to hard and undeserved censures of such a Precedent but might be induced by Authorities so revered by them to believe such honours innocent and by degrees to give those honours which themselves conceived to reach the Idol which in regard of Consciences so perswaded could be no better than downright Idolatry In such a Case as this he professes himself so tender of the welfare even of such weak Brethren and so willing to abridg himself even of his own Liberty where it might prove prejudicial to it that he would rather never eat at all than scandalize a weak Brother by doing so 1 Cor. VIII 13 Which way of accommodation seems rather to silence the Disputes than to decide them and is thought as suitable to the office of a Peace-maker in these Controversies which occasion our present Divisions as in those which occasioned those Discourses of the Apostles both of them being alike conceived to concern only things indifferent § XXXI BUT the Answer will be very easie whether we consider the reason of the thing or the Authority of the Apostle I confess it is very agreeable with the Office of a Peace-maker not to interpose with any earnestness in such Controversies which are not momentous for Peace and wherein his earnest interposition may weaken his Authority with that Party with which he engages especially then when he foresees his Authority not to be so great with the contrary Party as to oblige them to acquiesce in his determination which is a Consideration of more efficacy now when no particular Person whatsoever can pretend to such an Authority with those of a different Perswasion as the Apostle might then and I confess withal that this is a Case very applicable to many of our present Controversies that either they are no more than mutual misunderstandings or if real like those in these Texts yet they are not worth contending for especially when they are debated betwixt private Persons whereof neither are under the others Jurisdiction But does it therefore follow that even in such as these a Peace-maker may not declare his Opinion and offer his Reasons in a way Modest and unprovoking Nay is it not warrantable by the Apostles Precedent who plainly takes their part who esteemed all meats alike Rom. XIV 14 the Controversie then so fiercely disputed Or do they think it unbecoming a Peace-maker so far to interess himself in a Party as to let Dissenters understand the reason they had rather to yield to those for whom he had declared Did not the Apostle even so whilst he defends his own Party as strong v. 1 2 3. and only excuses the other as tollerable in their weakness and frailty Wherein therefore is it that we deviate from the Apostles Precedent Is it that though we do not perswade to yet we also do not disswade Superiors from the prosecution of Dissenters But this is plainly none of the Apostles Case who had not to do with Differences betwixt Superiors and Subjects but only betwixt private co-ordinate Christians So he argues Who art thou that Judgest anothers Servant v. 4. To his own Master he standeth or falleth Clearly implying a want of Jurisdiction in their mutual Censures which sure our Adversaries themselves cannot understand of the Censures of the Church if any such had been interposed especially considering her as She was then to be considered as under the extraordinary Priviledges of the Apostolical Office and several other Extraordinary both Officers and Assistances of those earlier Ages § XXXII BUT as the limitation of the Apostles Case plainly destroys the Conclusiveness of his Rule in a latitude disproportionable to his design so the reason of the thing does oblige Peace-makers to abett some Controversies For sure it will not be denyed but that there are some Controversies of that sort that Men differing in their Judgments concerning them and Practicing consequently to such Differences must be obliged to violate the publick Peace And sure it cannot be thought dissonant to the Office of a Peace-maker that he should oppose himself to such Opinions as are themselves so opposite to his great design It is easie to discern how improperly the Topicks on which our Adversaries would have us insist are applicable here so easie as that I cannot think it necessary to instance in them Nay indeed the very same reason which would prove it advisable for Controvertists not to abett Parties in matters of inferiour concernment will I do not say prove it only advisable but oblige them to do it here For can there be a more suitable employment for a Peace-maker than to shew his Zeal against the obstacles of Peace And can any obstacles of Peace be more mischievous than such as necessarily engage Men into Parties and Factions and when they are once so engaged make their differences irreconcilable And what can more effectually do this than Dividing Principles For what can more seriously terrifie well-meaning Persons from their complyances with Men than to think that such complyances cannot be purchased at an easier rate than the loss of their Peace with God Or what can make them more implacable to one another than when all Moderation is interpreted as a defect of Zeal Nay when they are not only actually so perswaded but even in their cooler humors can have no reason to be perswaded otherwise as long as they were serious in the belief of their first Dividing Principles For such there are no other Means of making them Peaceable than either the Contradiction or the
Investiture into his own Power with those whereby the Ecclesiasticks are ordinarily settled in theirs then certainly the Original Ecclesiastical Power must be conceived more obligatory and less obnoxious to Appeal than the Secular which has been thus fortified by it § X AND 5. By the general Principles of Government it is not only true that Officers of higher Dignity are to be obeyed as Representatives of the Prince such as are Viceroys and Deputies but it is also true of the meanest Officers that are such as Constables c. That resistance of them in any Case is counted a resistance of the Prince and even where they transgress the Laws yet they are not to be opposed But according to the method of Regular Appeals not by an immediate recourse to the Prince himself but their more immediate Superiors And what is decreed in such Cases by those inferior Subordinate Officers to whom the Appeal is made is the same way to be obeyed as if it had been decreed by the Prince himself and under the same hazard of incurring the guilt of Rebellion against him especially where there can be no access to the Person of the Prince himself as there is none in our present Case So that by this method there can be no lawful remedy against the Exorbitances even of inferior Governours but by recourse to their Superiors and the Sentence given by Superiors upon such Appeal cannot be resisted without resisting Christ himself Thus Christ as a Governour is concerned to take care for the erection of a Body Politick consisting of Visible Governours as well as governed and Subordinate as well as Supreme Governours and to provide means of obliging all to obey them all respectively under pain of being accounted refractory against himself as a means of securing the performance of his own will by us which must be performed by us if we be real Subjects § XI BUT 2. He is also further concerned to see not only that his Will be performed by us but also that it be performed by us because it is his Will and not because it is our own humour and that it may appear to be so performed by us the erection of a Body Politick is also necessary He is concerned as a Governour to take care that it may appear even to Men that his Will is performed by us because it is his Will and not only because it is our humour to do the things willed by him For it is absolutely necessary for Government that it may attain the ends of Government to keep up its own reputation in the minds of Subjects For a despised Government can neither awe by its threats nor allure by its rewards nor consequently have any hold on the minds of Subjects to oblige them to perform their Duties or to preserve the publick Peace which are the most essential ends of Government Of this all wise Men have been so very sensible as that it has always been thought fit to punish the least affronts against Majesty how inconsiderable soever otherwise in themselves with the severest Penalties Though all civilized Nations and Places would afford innumerable instances hereof yet at present I name only one because I believe it will be of most Authority with our dissenting Brethren 2 Sam. x. 4.5 1 Chron. xix 4.5 and that is of David The affront of Hanun the Ammonite was not that of a Subject but of a neighbouring absolute Prince not against his Person but only his Ambassadors nor even against them was it such as might do them any permanent inconvenience It was only a matter of present shame the shaving of one half of their beards and cutting off their garments to the middle Yet we see this occasioned a very severely managed War wherein besides the mischief done in hot blood the whole People that were taken as Prisoners of War were treated with excessive rigour They were put under sawes and harrows of Iron 2 Sam. xii 31 1 Chron. xx 3 and axes of Iron and made to pass under the brick Kilne And to treat a Prince thus to whose Father David himself had confessed himself so much obliged I suppose in his exile under Saul for Nahash the Father of Hanun seems to have been the same who was vanquished by Saul 1 Sam. XI Ant. l. vi c. 5. Whereas yet Josephus without any ground from the Sacred Text will have him killed in the fight though afterwards in the Story it self he makes him newly deceased when this Embassy was sent Id. Ant. l. vii c. 5. unless possibly the distance between these two actions may incline us to suspect that there were two different Kings of the Ammonites of the same name To do thus with the Ammonites to whom the Nation of the Jews was so nearly related to the generality of those who had yielded to his mercy and in all their Cities may to Persons not considering how fatal in their consequences things may be which are inconsiderable in themselves and how necessary it is for Government that such consequences be in time prevented seem an excessively harsh expiation of so small a guilt Yet by David whom his History shews not to have been cruelly disposed nor revengeful this was thought necessary for preservation of his Government § XII NOW as Government can signify nothing without this reputation for the good of Subjects so neither can this reputation be preserved among them unless it may appear that they who obey the Authority do it not only to please themselves but him who has commanded the things to be performed by them and thereby signify their acknowledgment of his Authority and their own Subjection to him For what good can this reputation do unless it may appear to them who are to be edified by it And how can it appear to them that Subjects doing the commands of Authority have really that honour and respect for the Authority that commanded them unless this may also appear to them by their Practice conformable to such a respect which is indeed the only Prudent Argument for discovering what another does seriously believe And how can this appear by their Practice unless they see them do something at the command of the Authority which they may have reason to believe they would not have done if the Authority had not commanded it But in all things wherein themselves are gratified it may very justly be suspected whether they would not have done them though no Authority had required them and in all things wherein this gratification of themselves cannot be disproved it may be very probably be presumed § XIII NOR indeed is this appearance that Men do what is commanded by Authority only for the sake of the Authority only necessary as some may be inclinable to conceive for ostentation of the Power with which the Persons Authorized are invested nor only for edifying others with the goodness of the example but also for securing the performance of the Duties themselves Indeed if
our Judgments were always so uncorrupt as that we might always be sensible of our own interests or all our Duties were accommodated not only to our greater and more solid Interests but to our humours also and we were likely always to continue in the same humour or at least secure from a frequent change there might then be some pretence that our Duty might generally be secured without contradiction of our humours But seeing none of these can be presumed certain and constant nay seeing all of them do most frequently fall out otherwise than it is requisite they should for securing the performance of our Duty that we are frequently either prejudiced against our Duty or changed from our former humours therefore it is necessary for securing performance that we do our Duty on constant and immutable reasons such as may not be obnoxious to the changes and vicissitudes of our humours And such is that and only that of doing our Duty with regard to the Authority of him who has required it § XIV NOW for discovering this whether Duty be performed on account of the Authority requiring it a visible Body Politick wherein Men may be invested with the Divine Authority and may therefore be allowed for Authentical Expositors of the Divine Will that so our Obedience to God may be known by our Obedience to Persons thus empowered by him is much better accommodated than if we confine the Divine Authority in matters of this nature to the Scriptures and allow the exposition of the Scriptures to the Consciences of particular Subjects as the measure of their Practice For as the Scriptures are now managed by them who reject all prudent use of Ecclesiastical Tradition for expounding them it is easy for them who will take their own fancies for the sense of the Scripture and then concern themselves not so much to prove what they have so presumed as to evade what may be objected against them to evade all possible confutation how false soever the Errors may be which on these terms they shall undertake to maintein For it is impossible on these terms so to assure any one sense of the Scripture in favour of any one side of a Controversy newly raised to be the true sense of the Holy Ghost as to exclude all other senses inconsistent with it especially in matters of Practice of a Temporary Obligation and such are the particulars controverted by our dissenting Brethren wherein whatever is pretended it can never appear that the Sacred Writers themselves designed to be so accurate and particular as our dissenting Brethren conceive And it is least of all credible that they should rightly understand the sense of the Scriptures in matters of this nature or assure any thing that may prevent licentious and dangerous expositions of others who wave the History of the Practice of the Church at or near those Ages wherein these Books were Written which must certainly be of most use for explaining the sense of the Sacred Writers in such matters § XV BESIDES though there had been even on their Principles better means for assuring a particular sense of the Holy Ghost in such particulars as these that might not be evaded by a Person desirous to practice otherwise yet how can we be assured that Persons act sincerely in following their convictions How shall we know that Persons of a violent temper and Seditious may not pretend the commands of God to be contrary to those of their ordinary Ecclesiastical Governours not that either they themselves believe them to be so or that they are at all solicitous for doing Gods will but meerly that so they may make use of a plausible pretence for gratifying their Seditious humours without the infamy of being thought Seditious It is certain many may do so who may either not be guilty of any inclination to any of those scandalous vices which are of ill repute with the Vulgar or if they be yet they may count it politick not only to conceal them but also to make an open solemn profession for the contrary in order to the gaining of a reputation to their ill designs And these are Cases which considering the humour of the Age and the haughty behaviour of many who are deeply engaged in the several Parties may without any uncharitableness be supposed likely to prove ordinary Now when we find Persons exceedingly pretending to be Religious impatient of all restraints that we can judg of either to be likely to proceed from God or to be thought by them to do so and only pretending to Subjection to God in such instances which may be as likely to be designed for their own gratification as for the service of God where we can either not be satisfied of their Sincerity that they do in earnest believe their own Practices to be warranted by Divine Authority or where though they were sincere yet the Evidence on which they proceed is of so ambiguous Interpretation as to be very capable of a compliance with their own desires whatever they be and so never likely to impose any thing on them contrary to their own Inclinations which is the only Case wherein we can conclude that what is performed by them is performed with regard to the Divine Authority how can we conclude that they have any real reverence for the Injunctions themselves or for the Authority by which they are imposed But further § XVI 2. HE is also as a Governour concerned to oblige us to the performance of our Duty by such Means as may prove most effectual with us for that purpose and certainly the external Solemnity of undertaking them is such a means and most likely to prove successful That he is as a Governour concerned to oblige us to the performance of our Duty by such means as may prove most likely to prevail with us for its actual performance will appear if it be considered that he is as a Governour concerned for such things as may make for the advantage of the Society in general And that withal it is much for the reputation of the goodness and Prudence of his Government to reconcile this publick benefit with the least prejudice to particular members of the Society And it is much more for its repute if it may prove advantageous to the interests of most of the particular Members And for both these purposes the performance of Duty by the particular Persons obliged is very useful § XVII IT is useful for the Publick For this is indeed to the commendation of the Prudence of any Government in general and particularly of the Divine Government to make the Duties of particular Subjects subservient to the good of the whole Community Nor is this only true of the Duty of Subordinate Ecclesiastical Governours whose peculiar Province it is to take care of the Publick though it be indeed most obviously and eminently true concerning them and God is as peculiarly concerned as a Governour to take care that such means may be used