with lands and houses and officers and revenues set apart from all other humane uses that is consecrated and made holy to those their Idols as Caverns Groves Woods Mountains and whole Ilands and have attributed to them not onely the shapes some of Men some of Beasts some of Monsters but also the Faculties and Passions of men and beasts as Sense Speech Sex Lust Generation and this not onely by mixing one with another to propagate the kind of Gods but also by mixing with men and women to beget mongrill Gods and but inmates of Heaven as Bacchus Hercules and others besides Anger Revenge and other passions of living creatures and the actions proceeding from them as Fraud Theft Adultery Sodomie and any vice that may be taken for an effect of Power or a cause of Pleasure and all such Vices as amongst men are taken to be against Law rather than against Honour Lastly to the Prognostiques of time to come which are naturally but Conjectures upon the Experience of time past and supernaturally divine Revelation the same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles partly upon pretended Experience partly upon pretended Revelation have added innumerable other superstitious wayes of Divination and made men believe they should find their fortunes sometimes in the ambiguous or senslesse answers of the Priests at Delphi Delos Ammon and other famous Oracles which answers were made ambiguous by designe to own the event both wayes or absurd by the intoxicating vapour of the place which is very frequent in sulphurous Cavernes Sometimes in the leaves of the Sibills of whose Prophecyes like those perhaps of Nostradamus for the fragments now extant seem to be the invention of later times there were some books in reputation in the time of the Roman Republiques Sometimes in the insignificant Speeches of Mad-men supposed to be possessed with a divine Spirit which Possession they called Enthusiasme and these kinds of foretelling events were accounted Theomancy or Prophecy Sometimes in the aspect of the Starres at their Nativity which was called Horoscopy and esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology Sometimes in their own hopes and feares called Thumomancy or Presage Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches that pretended conference with the dead which is called Necromancy Conjuring and Witchcraft and is but juggling and confederate knavery Sometimes in the Casuall flight or feeding of birds called Augury Sometimes in the Entrayles of a sacrificed beast which was Aruspicina Sometimes in Dreams Sometimes in Croaking of Ravens or chattering of Birds Sometimes in the Lineaments of the face which was called Metoposcopy or by Palmistry in the lines of the hand in casuall words called Omina Sometimes in Monsters or unusuall accidents as Ecclipses Comets rare Meteors Earthquakes Inundations uncouth Births and the like which they called Portenta and Ostenta because they thought them to portend or foreshew some great Calamity to come Somtimes in meer Lottery as Crosse and Pile counting holes in a sive dipping of Verses in Homer and Virgil and innumerable other such vaine conceipts So easie are men to be drawn to believe any thing from such men as have gotten credit with them and can with gentlenesse and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance And therefore the first Founders and Legislators of Common-wealths amongst the Gentiles whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience and peace have in all places taken care First to imprint in their minds a beliefe that those precepts which they gave concerning Religion might not be thought to proceed from their own device but from the dictates of some God or other Spirit or else that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere mortalls that their Lawes might the more easily be received So Numa Pompilius pretended to receive the Ceremonies he instituted amongst the Romans from the Nymph Egeria and the first King and founder of the Kingdome of Peru pretended himselfe and his wife to be the children of the Sunne and Mahomet to set up his new Religion pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost in forme of a Dove Secondly they have had a care to make it believed that the same things were displeasing to the Gods which were forbidden by the Lawes Thirdly to prescribe Ceremonies Supplications Sacrifices and Festivalls by which they were to believe the anger of the Gods might be appeased and that ill success in War great contagions of Sicknesse Earthquakes and each mans private Misery came from the Anger of the Gods and their Anger from the Neglect of their Worship or the forgetting or mistaking some point of the Ceremonies required And though amongst the antient Romans men were not forbidden to deny that which in the Poets is written of the paines and pleasures after this life which divers of great authority and gravity in that state have in their Harangues openly derided yet that beliefe was alwaies more cherished than the contrary And by these and such other Institutions they obtayned in order to their end which was the peace of the Commonwealth that the common people in their misfortunes laying the fault on neglect or errour in their Ceremonies or on their own disobedience to the lawes were the lesse apt to mutâ—…ny against their Governors And being entertained with the pomp and pastime of Festivalls and publike Games made in honour of the Gods needed nothing else but bread to keep them from discontent murmuring and commotion against the State And therefore the Romans that had conquered the greatest part of the then known World made no scruple of tollerating any Religion whatsoeuer in the City of Rome it selfe unlesse it had somthing in it that could not consist with their Civill Government nor do we read that any Religion was there forbidden but that of the Jewes who being the peculiar Kingdome of God thought it unlawfull to acknowledge subjection to any mortall King or State whatsoever And thus you see how the Religion of the Gentiles was a part of their Policy But where God himselfe by supernaturall Revelation planted Religion there he also made to himselfe a peculiar Kingdome and gave Lawes not only of behaviour towards himselfe but also towards one another and thereby in the Kingdome of God the Policy and lawes Civill are a part of Religion and therefore the distinction of Temporall and Spirituall Domination hath there no place It is true that God is King of all the Earth Yet may he be King of a peculiar and chosen Nation For there is no more incongruity therein than that he that hath the generall command of the whole Army should have withall a peculiar Regiment or Company of his own God is King of all the Earth by his Power but of his chosen people he is King by Covenant But to speake more largly of the Kingdome of God both by Nature and Covenant I have in the following discourse assigned an other place From the propagation of Religion it is not hard to understand the causes
scorn with a crown of Thornes and for the proclaiming of him it is said of the Disciples Acts 17. 7. That they did all of them contrary to the decrees of Caesar saying there was another King one Iesus The Kingdome therefore of God is a reall not a metaphoricall Kingdome and so taken not onely in the Old Testament but the New when we say For thine is the Kingdome the Power and Glory it is to be understood of Gods Kingdome by force of our Covenant not by the Right of Gods Power for such a Kingdome God alwaies hath so that it were superfluous to say in our prayer Thy Kingdome come unlesse it be meant of the Restauration of that Kingdome of God by Christ which by revolt of the Israelites had been interrupted in the election of Saul Nor had it been proper to say The Kingdome of Heaven is at hand ot to pray Thy Kingdome come if it had still continued There be so-many other places that confirm this interpretation that it were a wonder there is no greater notice taken of it but that it gives too much light to Christian Kings to see their right of Ecclesiasticall Government This they have observed that in stead of a Sacerdotall Kingdome translate a Kingdome of Priests for they may as well translate a Royall Priesthood as it is in St. Peter into a Priesthood of Kings And whereas for a peculiar people they put a pretious jewel or treasure a man might as well call the speciall Regiment or Company of a Generall the Generalls pretious Jewel or his Treasure In short the Kingdome of God is a Civill Kingdome which consisted first in the obligation of the people of Israel to those Laws which Moses should bring unto them from Mount Sinai and which afterwards the High Priest for the time being should deliver to them from before the Cherubins in the Sanctum Sanctorum and which Kingdome having been cast off in the election of Saul the Prophets foretold should be restored by Christ and the Restauration whereof we daily pray for when we say in the Lords Prayer Thy Kingdome come and the Right whereof we acknowledge when we adde For thine is the Kingdome the Power and Glory for ever and ever Amen and the Proclaiming whereof was the Preaching of the Apostles and to which men are prepared by the Teachers of the Gospel to embrace which Gospel that is to say to promise obedience to Gods government is to bee in the Kingdome of Grace because God hath gratis given to such the power to bee the Subjects that is Children of God hereafter when Christ shall come in Majesty to judge the world and actually to govern his owne people which is called the Kingdome of Glory If the Kingdome of God called also the Kingdome of Heaven from the gloriousnesse and admirable height of that throne were not a Kingdome which God by his Lieutenants or Vicars who deliver his Commandements to the people did exercise on Earth there would not have been so much contention and warre about who it is by whom God speaketh to us neither would many Priests have troubled themselves with Spirituall Jurisdiction nor any King have denied it them Out of this literall interpretation of the Kingdome of God ariseth also the true interpretation of the word HOLY For it is a word which in Gods Kingdome answereth to that which men in their Kingdomes use to call Publique or the Kings The King of any Countrey is the Publique Person or Representative of all his own Subjects And God the King of Israel was the Holy one of Israel The Nation which is subject to one earthly Soveraign is the Nation of that Soveraign that is of the Publique Person So the Jews who were Gods Nation were called Exod. 19. 6. a Holy Nation For by Holy is alwaies understood either God himselfe or that which is Gods in propriety as by Publique is alwaies meant either the Person of the Common-wealth it self or something that is so the Common-wealths as no private person can claim any propriety therein Therefore the Sabbath Gods day is a Holy day the Temple Gods house a Holy house Sacrifices Tithes and Offerings Gods tribute Holy duties Priests Prophets and anointed Kings under Christ Gods Ministers Holy men the Coelestiall ministring Spirits Gods Messengers Holy Angels and the like and wheresoever the word Holy is taken properly there is still something signified of Propriety gotten by consent In saying Hallowed be thy name we do but pray to God for grace to keep the first Commandement of having no other Gods but him Mankind is Gods Nation in propriety but the Jews only were a Holy Nation Why but because they became his Propriety by covenant And the word Profane is usually taken in the Scripture for the same with Common and consequently their contraries Holy and Proper in the Kingdome of God must be the same also But figuratively those men also are called Holy that led such godly lives as if they had forsaken all worldly designs and wholly devoted and given themselves to God In the proper sense that which is made Holy by Gods appropriating or separating it to his own use is said to be sanctified by God as the Seventh day in the fourth Commandement and as the Elect in the New Testament were said to bee sanctified when they were endued with the Spirit of godlinesse And that which is made Holy by the dedication of men and given to God so as to be used onely in his publique service is called aso SACRED and said to be consecrated as Temples and other Houses of Publique Prayer and their Utensils Priests and Ministers Victimes Offerings and the externall matter of Sacraments Of Holinesse there be degrees for of those things that are set apart for the service of God there may bee some set apart again for a neerer and more especial service The whole Nation of the Israelites were a people Holy to God yet the tribe of Levi was amongst the Israelites a Holy tribe and amongst the Levites the Priests were yet more Holy and amongst the Priests the High Priest was the most Holy So the Land of Judea was the Holy Land but the Holy City wherein God was to be worshipped was more Holy and again the Temple more Holy than the City and the Sanctum Sanctorum more Holy than the rest of the Temple A SACRAMENT is a separation of some visible thing from common use and a consecration of it to Gods service for a sign either of our admission into the Kingdome of God to be of the number of his peculiar people or for a Commemoration of the same In the Old Testament the sign of Admission was Circumcision in the New Testament Baptisme The Commemoration of it in the Old Testament was the Eating at a certaine time which was Anniversary of the Paschall Lamb by which they were put in mind of the night wherein they were delivered out of their bondage in
a Power to punish him which is to make a new Soveraign and again for the same reason a third to punish the second and so continually without end to the Confusion and Dissolution of the Common-wealth A Fifâ—…h doctrine that tendeth to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth is That every private man has an absolute Propriety in his Goods such as excludeth the Right of the Soveraign Every man has indeed a Propriety that excludes the Right of every other Subject And he has it onely from the Soveraign Power without the protection whereof every other man should have equall Right to the same But if the Right of the Soveraign also be excluded he cannot performe the office they have put him into which is to defend them both from forraign enemies and from the injuries of one another and consequently there is no longer a Common-wealth And if the Propriety of Subjects exclude not the Right of the Soveraign Representative to their Goods much lesse to their offices of Judicature or Execution in which they Represent the Soveraign himselfe There is a Sixth doctrine plainly and directly against the essence of a Common-wealth and 't is this That the Soveraign Power may be divided For what is it to divide the Power of a Common-wealth but to Dissolve it for Powers divided mutually destroy each other And for these doctrines men are chiefly beholding to some of those that making profession of the Lawes endeavour to make them depend upon their own learning and not upon the Legislative Power And as False Doctrine so also often-times the Example of different Government in a neighbouring Nation disposeth men to alteration of the forme already setled So the people of the Jewes were stirred up to reject God and to call upon the Prophet Samuel for a King after the manner of the Nations So also the lesser Cities of Greece were continually disturbed with seditions of the Aristocraticall and Democraticall factions one part of almost every Common-wealth desiring to imitate the Lacedaemonians the other the Athenians And I doubt not but many men have been contented to see the late troubles in England out of an imitation of the Low Countries supposing there needed no more to grow rich than to change as they had done the forme of their Government For the constitution of mans nature is of it selfe subject to desire novelty When therefore they are provoked to the same by the neighbourhood also of those that have been enriched by it it is almost impossible for them not to be content with those that solicite them to change and love the first beginnings though they be grieved with the continuance of disorder like hot blouds that having gotten the itch tear themselves with their own nayles till they can endure the smart no longer And as to Rebellion in particular against Monarchy one of the most frequent causes of it is the Reading of the books of Policy and Histories of the antient Greeks and Romans from which young men and all others that are unprovided of the Antidote of solid Reason receiving a strong and delightfull impression of the great exploits of warre atchieved by the Conductors of their Armies receive withall a pleasing Idea of all they have done besides and imagine their great prosperity not to have proceeded from the aemulation of particular men but from the vertue of their popular forme of government Not considering the frequent Seditions and Civill warres produced by the imperfection of their Policy From the reading I say of such books men have undertaken to kill their Kings because the Greek and Latine writers in their books and discourses of Policy make it lawfull and laudable for any man so to do provided before he do it he call him Tyrant For they say not Regicide that is killing of a King but Tyrannicide that is killing of a Tyrant is lawfull From the same books they that live under a Monarch conceive an opinion that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth enjoy Liberty but that in a Monarchy they are all Slaves I say they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an opinion not they that live under a Popular Government for they find no such matter In summe I cannot imagine how any thing can be more prejudiciall to a Monarchy than the allowing of such books to be publikely read without present applying such correctives of discreet Masters as are fit to take away their Venime Which Venime I will not doubt to compare to the biting of a mad Dogge which is a disease the Physicians call Hydrophobia or fear of Water For as he that is so bitten has a continuall torment of thirst and yet abhorreth water and is in such an estate as if the poyson endeavoured to convert him into a Dogge So when a Monarchy is once bitten to the quick by those Democraticall writers that continually snarle at that estate it wanteth nothing more than a strong Monarch which neverthelesse out of a certain Tyrannophobia or feare of being strongly governed when they have him they abhorre As there have been Doctors that hold there be three Soules in a man so there be also that think there may be more Soules that is more Soveraigns than one in a Common-wealth and set up a Supremacy against the Soveraignty Canons against Lawes and a Ghostly Authority against the Civill working on mens minds with words and distinctions that of themselves signifie nothing but bewray by their obscurity that there walketh as some think invisibly another Kingdome as it were a Kingdome of Fayries in the dark Now seeing it is manifest that the Civill Power and the Power of the Common-wealth is the same thing and that Supremacy and the Power of making anons and granting Faculties implyeth a Common-wealth it followeth that where one is Soveraign another Supreme where one can make Lawes and another make Canons there must needs be two Common-wealths of one the same Subjects which is a Kingdome divided in it selfe and cannot stand For notwithstanding the insignificant distinction of Temporall and Ghostly they are still two Kingdomes and every Subject is subject to two Masters For seeing the Ghostly Power challengeth the Right to declare what is Sinne it challengeth by consequence to declare what is Law Sinne being nothing but the transgression of the Law and again the Civill Power challenging to declare what is Law every Subject must obey two Masters who both will have their Commands be observed as Law which is impossible Or if it be but one Kingdome either the Civill which is the Power of the Common-wealth must be subordinate to the Ghostly and then there is no Soveraignty but the Ghostly or the Ghostly must be subordinate to the Temporall and then there is no Supremacy but the Temporall When therefore these two Powers oppose one another the Common-wealth cannot but be in great danger of Civill warre and Dissolution For the Civill Authority being more visible and standing in the cleerer light
and they that were governed did all expect the Messiah and Kingdome of God which they could not have done if their Laws had forbidden him when he came to manifest and declare himself Seeing therefore he did nothing but by Preaching and Miracles go about to prove himselfe to be that Messiah hee did therein nothing against their laws The Kingdome hee claimed was to bee in another world He taught all men to obey in the mean time them that sate in Moses seat He allowed them to give Caesar his tribute and refused to take upon himselfe to be a Judg. How then could his words or actions bee seditious or tend to the overthrow of their then Civill Government But God having determined his sacrifice for the reduction of his elect to their former covenanted obedience for the means whereby he would bring the same to effect made use of their malice and ingratitude Nor was it contrary to the laws of Caesar. For though Pilate himself to gratifie the Jews delivered him to be crucified yet before he did so he pronounced openly that he found no fault in him And put for title of his condemnation not as the Jews required that he pretended to bee King bnt simply That hee was King of the Iews and notwithstanding their clamour refused to alter it saying What I have written I have written As for the third part of his Office which was to be King I have already shewn that his Kingdome was not to begin till the Resurrection But then he shall be King not onely as God in which sense he is King already and ever shall be of all the Earth in vertue of his omnipotence but also peculiarly of his own Elect by vertue of the pact they make with him in their Baptisme And therefore it is that our Saviour saith Mat. 19. 28. that his Apostles should sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel When the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory whereby he signified that he should reign then in his humane nature and Mat. 16. 27. The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his Angels and then he shall reward every man according to his works The same we may read Marke 13. 26. and 14. 62. and more expressely for the time Luke 22. 29 30. I appoint unto you a Kingdome as my Father hath appointed to mee that you may eat and drink at my table in my Kingdome and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel By which it is manifest that the Kingdome of Christ appointed to him by his Father is not to be before the Son of Man shall come in Glory and make his Apostles Judges of the twelve tribes of Israel But a man may here ask seeing there is no marriage in the Kingdome of Heaven whether men shall then eat and drink what eating therefore is meant in this place This is expounded by our Saviour Iohn 6. 27. where he saith Labour not for the meat which perisheth but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life which the Son of man shall give you So that by eating at Christs table is meant the eating of the Tree of Life that is to say the enjoying of Immortality in the Kingdome of the Son of Man By which places and many more it is evident that our Saviours Kingdome is to bee exercised by him in his humane nature Again he is to be King then no otherwise than as subordinate or Vicegerent of God the Father as Moses was in the wildernesse and as the High Priests were before the reign of Saul and as the Kings were after it For it is one of the Prophecies concerning Christ that he should be like in Office to Moses I will raise them up a Prophet saith the Lord Deut. 18. 18. from amongst their Brethren like unto thee and will put my words into his mouth and this similitude with Moses is also apparent in the actions of our Saviour himself whilest he was conversant on Earth For as Moses chose twelve Princes of the tribes to govern under him so did our Saviour choose twelve Apostles who shall sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel And as Moses authorized Seventy Elders to receive the Spirit of God and to Prophecy to the people that is as I have said before to speak unto them in the name of God so our Saviour also ordained seventy Disciples to preach his Kingdome and Salvation to all Nations And as when a complaint was made to Moses against those of the Seventy that prophecyed in the camp of Israel he justified them in it as being subservient therein to his government so also our Saviour when St. John complained to him of a certain man that cast out Devills in his name justified him therein saying Luke 9. 50. Forbid him not for hee that is not against us is on our part Again our Saviour resembled Moses in the institution of Sacraments both of Admission into the Kingdome of God and of Commemoration of his deliverance of his Elect from their miserable condition As the Children of Israel had for Sacrament of their Reception into the Kingdome of God before the time of Moses the rite of Circumcision which rite having been omitted in the Wildernesse was again restored as soon as they came into the land of Promise so also tâ—…e Jews before the coming of our Saviour had a rite of Baptizing that is of washing with water all those that being Gentiles embraced the God of Israel This rite St. John the Baptist used in the reception of all them that gave their names to the Christ whom hee preached to bee already come into the world and our Saviour instituted the same for a Sacrament to be taken by all that beleeved in him From what cause the rite of Baptisme first proceeded is not expressed formally in the Scripture but it may be probably thought to be an imitation of the law of Moses concerning Leprousie wherein the Leprous man was commanded to be kept out of the campe of Israel for a certain time after which time being judged by the Priest to be clean hee was admitted into the campe after a solemne Washing And this may therefore bee a type of the Washing in Baptisme wherein such men as are cleansed of the Leprousie of Sin by Faith are received into the Church with the solemnity of Baptisme There is another conjecture drawn from the Ceremonies of the Gentiles in a certain case that rarely happens and that is when a man that was thought dead chanced to recover other men made scruple to converse with him as they would doe to converse with a Ghost unlesse hee were received again into the number of men by Washing as Children new born were washed from the uncleannesse of their nativity which was a kind of new birth This ceremony of the Greeks in the time that Judaea was under the Dominion of Alexander and the Greeks
God himself was their King and Moses Aaron and the succeeding High Priests were his Lieutenants it is manifest that the Right of Tythes and Offerings was constituted by the Civill Power After their rejection of God in the demanding of a King they enjoyed still the same revenue but the Right thereof was derived from that that the Kings did never take it from them for the Publique Revenue was at the disposing of him that was the Publique Person and that till the Captivity was the King And again after the return from the Captivity they paid their Tythes as before to the Priest Hitherto therefore Church Livings were determined by the Civill Soveraign Of the maintenance of our Saviour and his Apostles we read onely they had a Purse which was carried by Judas Iscariot and that of the Apostles such as were Fisher-men did sometimes use their trade and that when our Saviour sent the Twelve Apostles to Preach he forbad them to carry Gold and Silver and Brasse in their purses for that the workman is worthy of his hire By which it is probable their ordinary maintenance was not unsuitable to their employment for their employment was ver 8. freely to give because they had freely received and their maintenance was the free gift of those that beleeved the good tyding they carryed about of the coming of the Messiah their Saviour To which we may adde that which was contributed out of gratitude by such as our Saviour had healed of diseases of which are mentioned Certain women Luke 8. 2 3. which had been healed of evill spirits and infirmities Mary Magdalen out of whom went seven Devills and Ioanna the wife of Chuza Herods Steward and Susanna and many others which ministred unto him of their substance After our Saviours Ascension the Christians of every City lived in Common upon the mony which was made of the sale of their lands and possessions and laid down at the feet of the Apostles of good will not of duty for whilest the Land remained saith S. Peter to Ananias Acts 5. 4. was it not thine and after it was sold was it not in thy power which sheweth he needed not have saved his land nor his money by lying as not being bound to contribute any thing at all unlesse he had pleased And as in the time of the Apostles so also all the time downward till after Constantine the Great we shall find that the maintenance of the Bishops and Pastors of the Christian Church was nothing but the voluntary contribution of them that had embraced their Doctrine There was yet no mention of Tythes but such was in the time of Constantine and his Sons the affection of Christians to their Pastors as Ammianus Marcellinus saith describing the sedition of Damasus and Vrsicinus about the Bishopricke that it was worth their contention in that the Bishops of those times by the liberality of their flock and especially of Matrons lived splendidly were carryed in Coaches and were sumptuous in their fare and apparell But here may some ask whether the Pastor were then bound to live upon voluntary contribution as upon almes For who saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 9. 7. goeth to war at his own charges or who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milke of the flock And again Doe ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the Temple and they which wait at the Altar partake with the Altar that is to say have part of that which is offered at the Altar for their maintenance And then he concludeth Even so hath the Lord appointed that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel From which place may be inferred indeed that the Pastors of the Church ought to be maintained by their flocks but not that the Pastors were to determine either the quantity or the kind of their own allowance and be as it were their own Carvers Their allowance must needs therefore be determined either by the gratitude and liberality of every particular man of their flock or by the whole Congregation By the whole Congregation it could not be because their Acts were then no Laws Therefore the maintenance of Pastors before Emperours and Civill Soveraigns had made Laws to settle it was nothing but Benevolence They that served at the Altar lived on what was offered So may the Pastors also take what is offered them by their flock but not exact what is not offered In what Court should they sue for it who had no Tribunalls Or if they had Arbitrators amongst themselves who should execute their Judgments when they had no power to arme their Officers It remaineth therefore that there could be no certaire maintenance assigned to any Pastors of the Church but by the whole Congregation and then onely when their Decrees should have the force not onely of Canons but also of Laws which Laws could not be made but by Emperours Kings or other Civill Soveraignes The Right of Tythes in Moses Law could not be applyed to the then Ministers of the Gospell because Moses and the High Priests were the Civill Soveraigns of the people under God whose Kingdom amongst the Jews was present whereas the Kingdome of God by Christ is yet to come Hitherto hath been shewn what the Pastors of the Church are what are the points of their Commission as that they were to Preach to Teach to Baptize to be Presidents in their severall Congregations what is Ecclesiasticall Censure viz. Excommunication that is to say in those places where Christanity was forbidden by the Civill Laws a putting of themselves out of the company of the Excommunicate and where Christianity was by the Civill Law commanded a putting the Excommunicate out of the Congregations of Christians who elected the Pastors and Ministers of the Church that it was the Congregation who consecrated and blessed them that it was the Pastor what was their due revenue that it was none but their own possessions and their own labour and the voluntary contributions of devout and gratefull Christians We are to consider now what Office in the Church those persons have who being Civill Soveraignes have embraced also the Christian Faith And first we are to remember that the Right of Judging what Doctrines are fit for Peace and to be taught the Subjects is in all Common-wealths inseparably annexed as hath been already proved cha 18. to the Soveraign Power Civill whether it be in one Man or in one Assembly of men For it is evident to the meanest capacity that mens actions are derived from the opinions they have of the Good or Evill which from those actions redound unto themselves and consequently men that are once possessed of an opinion that their obedience to the Soveraign Power will bee more hurtfull to them than their disobedience will disobey the Laws and thereby overthrow the Common-wealth and introduce confusion and Civill war for the avoiding whereof all Civill Government was
every Living Creature And likewise of Man God made him of the dust of the earth and breathed in his face the breath of Life factus est Homo in animam viventem that is and Man was made a Living Creature And after Noah came out of the Arke God saith hee will no more smite omnem animam viventem that is every Living Creature And Deut. 12. 23. Eate not the Bloud for the Bloud is the Soule that is the Life From which places if by Soule were meant a Substance Incorporeall with an existence separated from the Body it might as well be inferred of any other living Creature as of Man But that the Souls of the Faithfull are not of theirown Nature but by Gods speciall Grace to remaine in their Bodies from the Resurrection to all Eternity I have already I think sufficiently proved out of the Scriptures in the 38. Chapter And for the places of the New Testament where it is said that any man shall be cast Body and Soul into Hell fire it is no more than Body and Life that is to say they shall be cast alive into the perpetuall fire of Gehenna This window it is that gives entrance to the Dark Doctrine first of Eternall Torments and afterwards of Purgatory and consequently of the walking abroad especially in places Consecrated Solitary or Dark of the Ghosts of men deceased and thereby to the pretences of Exorcisme and Conjuration of Phantasmes as also of Invocation of men dead and to the Doctrine of Indulgences that is to say of exemption for a time or for ever from the fire of Purgatory wherein these Incorporeall Substances are pretended by burning to be cleansed and made fit for Heaven For men being generally possessed before the time of our Saviour by contagion of the Daemonology of the Greeks of an opinion that the Souls of men were substances distinct from their Bodies and therefore that when the Body was dead the Soulâ—… of every man whether godly or wicked must subsist somewhere by vertue of its own nature without acknowledging therein any supernaturall gift of Gods the Doctors of the Church doubted a long time what was the place which they were to abide in till they should be re-united to their Bodies in the Resurrection supposing for a while they lay under the Altars but afterward the Church of Rome found it more profitable to build for them this place of Purgatory which by some other Churches in this later age has been demolished Let us now consider what texts of Scripture seem most to confirm these three generall Errors I have here touched As for those which Cardinall Bellarmine hath alledged for the present Kingdome of God administred by the Pope than which there are none that make a better shew of proof I have already answered them and made it evident that the Kingdome of God instituted by Moses ended in the election of Saul After which time the Priest of his own authority never deposed any King That which the High Priest did to Athaliah was not done in his owne right but in the right of the young King Joash her Son But Solomon in his own right deposed the High Priest Abiathar and set up another in his place The most difficult place to answer of all those that can be brought to prove the Kingdome of God by Christ is already in this world is alledged not by Bellarmine nor any other of the Church of Rome but by Beza that will have it to begin from the Resurrection of Christ. But whether hee intend thereby to entitle the Presbytery to the Supreme Power Ecclesiasticall in the Common-wealth of Geneva and consequently to every Presbytery in every other Common-wealth or to Princes and other Civill Soveraigns I doe not know For the Presbytery hath challenged the power to Excomunicate their owne Kings and to bee the Supreme Moderators in Religion in the places where they have that form of Church government no lesse then the Pope callengeth it universally The words are Marke 9. 1. Verily I say unto you that there be some of them that stand here which shall not tast of death till they have seene the Kingdome of God come with power Which words if taken grammatically make it certaine that either some of those men that stood by Christ at that time are yet alive or else that the Kingdome of God must be now in this present world And then there is another place more difficult For when the Apostles after our Saviours Resurrection and immediately before his Ascension asked our Saviour saying Acts 1. 6. Wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdome to Israel he answered them It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power But ye shall receive power by the comming of the Holy Ghost upon you and yee shall be my Martyrs witnesses both in Ierusalem in all Iudaea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the Earth Which is as much as to say My Kingdome is not yet come nor shall you foreknow when it shall come for it shall come as a theefe in the night But I will send you the Holy Ghost and by him you shall have power to beare witnesse to all the world by your preaching of my Resurrection and the workes I have done and the doctrine I have taught that they may beleeve in me and expect eternall life at my comming againe How does this agree with the comming of Christs Kingdome at the Resurrection And that which St. Paul saies 1 Thessal 1. 9 10. That they turned from Idols to serve the living and true God and to waite for his Sonne from Heaven Where to waite for his Sonne from Heaven is to wait for his comming to be King in power which were not necessary if his Kingdome had beene then present Againe if the Kingdome of God began as Beza on that place Mark 9. 1. would have it at the Resurrection what reason is there for Christians ever since the Resurrection to say in their prayers Let thy Kingdome Come It is therefore manifest that the words of St. Mark are not so to be interpreted There be some of them that stand here saith our Saviour that shall not tast of death till they have seen the Kingdome of God come in power If then this Kingdome were to come at the Resurrection of Christ why is it said some of them rather than all For they all lived till after Christ was risen But they that require an exact interpretation of this text let them interpret first the like words of our Saviour to St. Peter concerning St. John chap. 21. 22. If I will that he tarry till I come what is that to thee upon which was grounded a report that hee should not dye Neverthelesse the truth of that report was neither confirmed as well grounded nor refuted as ill grounded on those words but left as a saying not understood
and in all differences between him and other Princes charmed with the word Power Spirituall to abandon their lawfull Soveraigns which is in effect an universall Monarchy over all Christendome For though they were first invested in the right of being Supreme Teachers of Christian Doctrine by and under Christian Emperors within the limits of the Romane Empire as is acknowledged by themselves by the title of Pontifex Maximus who was an Officer subject to the Civill State yet after the Empire was divided and dissolved it was not hard to obtrude upon the people already subject to them another Title namely the Right of St. Peter not onely to save entire their pretended Power but also to extend the same over the same Christian Provinces though no more united in the Empire of Rome This Benefit of an Universall Monarchy considering the desire of men to bear Rule is a sufficient Presumption that the Popes that pretended to it and for a long time enjoyed it were the Authors of the Doctrine by which it was obtained namely that the Church now on Earth is the Kingdome of Christ. For that granted it must be understood that Christ hath some Lieutenant amongst us by whom we are to be told what are his Commandements After that certain Churches had renounced this universall Power of the Pope one would expect in reason that the Civill Soveraigns in all those Churches should have recovered so much of it as before they had unadvisedly let it goe was their own Right and in their own hands And in England it was so in effect saving that they by whom the Kings administred the Government of Religion by maintaining their imployment to be in Gods Right seemed to usurp if not a Supremacy yet an Independency on the Civill Power and they but seemed to usurpe it in as much as they acknowledged a Right in the King to deprive them of the Exercise of their Functions at his pleasure But in those places where the Presbytery took that Office though many other Doctrines of the Church of Rome were forbidden to be taught yet this Doctrine that the Kingdome of Christ is already come and that it began at the Resurrection of our Saviour was still retained But cui bono What Profit did they expect from it The same which the Popes expected to have a Soveraign Power over the People For what is it for men to excommunicate their lawful King but to keep him from all places of Gods publique Service in his own Kingdom and with force to resist him when he with force endeavoureth to correct them Or what is it without Authority from the Civill Soveraign to excommunicate any person but to take from him his Lawfull Liberty that is to usurpe an unlawfull Power over their Brethren The Authors therefore of this Darknesse in Religion are the Romane and the Presbyterian Clergy To this head I referre also all those Doctrines that serve them to keep the possession of this spirituall Soveraignty after it is gotten As first that the Pope in his publique capacity cannot erre For who is there that beleeving this to be true will not readily obey him in whatsoever he commands Secondly that all other Bishops in what Common-wealth soever have not their Right neither immediately from God nor mediately from their Civill Soveraigns but from the Pope is a Doctrine by which there comes to be in every Christian Common-wealth many potent men for so are Bishops that have their dependance on the Pope and owe obedience to him though he be a forraign Prince by which means he is able as he hath done many times to raise a Civill War against the State that submits not it self to be governed according to his pleasure and Interest Thirdly the exemption of these and of all other Priests and of all Monkes and Fryers from the Power of the Civill Laws For by this means there is a great part of every Common-wealth that enjoy the benefit of the Laws and are protected by the Power of the Civill State which neverthelesse pay no part of the Publique expence nor are lyable to the penalties as other Subjects due to their crimes and consequently stand not in fear of any man but the Pope and adhere to him onely to uphold his universall Monarchy Fourthly the giving to their Priests which is no more in the New Testament but Presbyters that is Elders the name of Sacerdotes that is Sacrificers which was the title of the Civill Soveraign and his publique Ministers amongst the Jews whilest God was their King Also the making the Lords Supper a Sacrifice serveth to make the People beleeve the Pope hath the same power over all Christians that Moses and Aaron had over the Jews that is to say all Power both Civill and Ecclesiasticall as the High Priest then had Fiftly the teaching that Matrimony is a Sacrament giveth to the Clergy the Judging of the lawfulnesse of Marriages and thereby of what Children are Legitimate and consequently of the Right of Succession to haereditary Kingdomes Sixtly the Deniall of Marriage to Priests serveth to assure this Power of the Pope over Kings For if a King be a Priest he cannot Marry and transmit his Kingdome to his Posterity If he be not a Priest then the Pope pretendeth this Authority Ecclesiasticall over him and over his people Seventhly from Auricular Confession they obtain for the assurance of their Power better intelligence of the designs of Princes and great persons in the Civill State than these can have of the designs of the State Ecclesiasticall Eighthly by the Canonization of Saints and declaring who are Martyrs they assure their Power in that they induce simple men into an obstinacy against the Laws and Commands of their Civill Soveraigns even to death if by the Popes excommunication they be declared Heretiques or Enemies to the Church that is as they interpret it to the Pope Ninthly they assure the same by the Power they ascribe to every Priest of making Christ and by the Power of ordaining Pennance and of Remitting and Retaining of sins Tenthly by the Doctrine of Purgatory of Justification by externall works and of Indulgences the Clergy is enriched Eleventhly by their Daemonology and the use of Exorcisme and other things appertaining thereto they keep or thinke they keep the People more in awe of their Power Lastly the Metaphysiques Ethiques and Politiques of Aristotle the frivolous Distinctions barbarous Terms and obscure Language of the Schoolmen taught in the Universities which have been all erected and regulated by the Popes Authority serve them to keep these Errors from being detected and to make men mistake the Ignis fatuus of Vain Philosophy for the Light of the Gospell To these if they sufficed not might be added other of their dark Doctrines the profit whereof redoundeth manifestly to the setting up of an unlawfull Power over the lawfull Soveraigns of Christian People or for
for the future but also an Approbation of all their actions past when there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world whose beginnings can in conscience be justified And because the name of Tyranny signifieth nothing more nor lesse than the name of Soveraignty be it in one or many men saving that they that use the former word are understood to bee angry with them they call Tyrants I think the toleration of a professed hatred of Tyranny is a Toleration of hatred to Common-wealth in generall and another evill seed not differing much from the former For to the Justification of the Cause of a Conqueror the Reproach of the Cause of the Conquered is for the most part necessary but neither of them necessary for the Obligation of the Conquered And thus much I have thought fit to say upon the Review of the first and second part of this Discourse In the 35. Chapter I have sufficiently declared out of the Scripture that in the Common-wealth of the Jewes God himselfe was made the Soveraign by Pact with the People who were therefore called his Peculiar People to distinguish them from the rest of the world over whom God reigned not by their Consent but by his own Power And that in this Kingdome Moses was Gods Lieutenant on Earth and that it was he that told them what Laws God appointed them to be ruled by But I have omitted to set down who were the Officers appointed to doe Execution especially in Capitall Punishments not then thinking it a matter of so necessary consideration as I find it since Wee know that generally in all Common-wealths the Execution of Corporeall Punishments was either put upon the Guards or other Souldiers of the Soveraign Power or given to those in whom want of means contempt of honour and hardnesse of heart concurred to make them sue for such an Office But amongst the Israelites it was a Positive Law of God their Soveraign that he that was convicted of a capitall Crime should be stoned to death by the People and that the Witnesses should cast the first Stone and after the Witnesses then the rest of the People This was a Law that designed who were to be the Executioners but not that any one should throw a Stone at him before Conviction and Sentence where the Congregation was Judge The Witnesses were neverthelesse to be heard before they proceeded to Execution unlesse the Fact were committed in the presence of the Congregation it self or in sight of the lawfull Judges for then there needed no other Witnesses but the Judges themselves Neverthelesse this manner of proceeding being not throughly understood hath given occasion to a dangerous opinion that any man may kill another in some cases by a Right of Zeal as if the Executions done upon Offenders in the Kingdome of God in old time proceeded not from the Soveraign Command but from the Authority of Private Zeal which if we consider the texts that seem to favour it is quite contrary First where the Levites fell upon the People that had made and worshipped the Golden Calfe and slew three thousand of them it was by the Commandement of Moses from the mouth of God as is manifest Exod. 32. 27. And when the Son of a woman of Israel had blasphemed God they that heard it did not kill him but brought him before Moses who put him under custody till God should give Sentence against him as appears Levit. 25. 11 12. Again Numbers 25. 6 7. when Phinehas killed Zimri and Cosbi it was not by right of Private Zeale Their Crime was committed in the sight of the Assembly there needed no Witnesse the Law was known and he the heir apparent to the Soveraignty and which is the principall point the Lawfulnesse of his Act depended wholly upon a subsequent Ratification by Moses whereof he had no cause to doubt And this Presumption of a future Ratification is sometimes necessary to the safety a Common-wealth as in a sudden Rebellion any man that can suppresse it by his own Power in the Countrey where it begins without expresse Law or Commission may lawfully doe it and provide to have it Ratified or Pardoned whilest it is in doing or after it is done Also Numb 35. 30. it is expressely said Whosoever shall kill the Murtherer shall kill him upon the word of Witnesses but Witnesses suppose a formall Judicature and consequently condemn that pretence of Ius Zelotarum The Law of Moses concerning him that enticeth to Idolatry that is to say in the Kingdome of God to a renouncing of his Allegiance Deut. 13. 8. forbids to conceal him and commands the Accuser to cause him to be put to death and to cast the first stone at him but not to kill him before he be Condemned And Deut. 17. ver 4 5 6. the Processe against Idolatry is exactly set down For God there speaketh to the People as Judge and commandeth them when a man is Accused of Idolatry to Enquire diligently of the Fact and finding it true then to Stone him but still the hand of the Witnesse throweth the first stone This is not Private Zeale but Publique Condemnation In like manner when a Father hath a rebellious Son the Law is Deut. 21. 18. that he shall bring him before the Judges of the Town and all the people of the Town shall Stone him Lastly by pretence of these Laws it was that St. Steven was Stoned and not by pretence of Private Zeal for before hee was carried away to Execution he had Pleaded his Cause before the High Priest There is nothing in all this nor in any other part of the Bible to countenance Executions by Private Zeal which being oftentimes but a conjunction of Ignorance and Passion is against both the Justice and Peace of a Common-wealth In the 36. Chapter I have said that it is not declared in what manner God spake supernaturally to Moses Not that he spake not to him sometimes by Dreams and Visions and by a supernaturall Voice as to other Prophets For the manner how he spake unto him from the Mercy-Seat is expressely set down Numbers 7. 89. in these words From that time forward when Moses entred into the Tabernacle of the Congregation to speak with God he heard a Voice which spake unto him from over the Mercy-Seate which is over the Arke of the Testimony from between the Cherubins he spake unto him But it is not declared in what consisted the praeeminence of the manner of Gods speaking to Moses above that of his speaking to other Prophets as to Samuel and to Abraham to whom he also spake by a Voice that is by Vision Unlesse the difference consist in the cleernesse of the Vision For Face to Face and Mouth to Mouth cannot be literally understood of the Infinitenesse and Incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature And as to the whole Doctrine I see not yet but the Principles of it are true and proper and the Ratiocination solid For I ground the Civill Right
of the resolution of the same into its first seeds or principles which are only an opinion of a Deity and Powers invisible and supernaturall that can never be so abolished out of humane nature but that new Religions may againe be made to spring out of them by the culture of such men as for such purpose are in reputation For seeing all formed Religion is founded at first upon the faith which a multitude hath in some one person whom they believe not only to be a wise man and to labouâ—… to procure their happiness but also to be a holy man to whom God himselfe vouchsafeth to declare his will supernaturally It followeth necessarily when they that have the Government of Religion shall come to have either the wisedome of those men their sincerity or their love suspected or that they shall be unable to shew any probable token of Divine Revelation that the Religion which they desire to uphold must be suspected likewise and without the feare of the Civill Sword contradicted and rejected That which taketh away the reputation of Wisedome in him that formeth a Religion or addeth to it when it is allready formed is the enjoyning of a beliefe of contradictories For both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true and therefore to enjoyne the beleife of them is an argument of ignorance which detects the Author in that and discredits him in all things else he shall propound as from revelation supernaturall which revelation a man may indeed have of many things above but of nothing against naturall reason That which taketh away the reputation of Sincerity is the doing or saying of such things as appeare to be signes that what they require other men to believe is not believed by themselves all which doings or sayings are therefore called Scandalous because they be stumbling blocks that make men to fall in the way of Religion as Injustice Cruelty Prophanesse Avarice and Luxury For who can believe that he that doth ordinarily such actions as proceed from any of these rootes believeth there is any such Invisible Power to be feared as he affrighteth other men withall for lesser faults That which taketh away the reputation of Love is the being detected of private ends as when the beliefe they require of others conduceth or seemeth to conduce to the acquiring of Dominion Riches Dignity or secure Pleasure to themselves onely or specially For that which men reap benefit by to themselves they are thought to do for their own sakes and not for love of others Lastly the testimony that men can render of divine Calling can be no other than the operation of Miracles or true Prophecy which also is a Miracle or extraordinary Felicity And therefore to those points of Religion which have been received from them that did such Miracles those that are added by such as approve not their Calling by some Miracle obtain no greater beliefe than what the Custome and Lawes of the places in which they be educated have wrought into them For as in naturall things men of judgement require naturall signes and arguments so in supernaturall things they require signes supernaturall which are Miracles before they consent inwardly and from their hearts All which causes of the weakening of mens faith do manifestly appear in the Examples following First we have the Example of the children of Israel who when Moses that had approved his Calling to them by Miracles and by the happy conduct of them out of Egypt was absent but 40. dayes revolted from the worship of the true God recommended to them by him and setting up a Golden Calfe for their God relapsed into the Idolatry of the Egyptians from whom they had been so lately delivered And again after Moses Aaron Joshua and that generation which had seen the great works of God in Israel were dead another generation arose and served Baal So that Miracles fayling Faith also failed Again when the sons of Samuel being constituted by their father Judges in Bersabee received bribes and judged unjustly the people of Israel refused any more to have God to be their King in other manner than he was King of other people and therefore cryed out to Samuel to choose them a King after the manner of the Nations So that Justice fayling Faith also fayled Insomuch as they deposed their God from reigning over them And whereas in the planting of Christian Religion the Oracles ceased in all parts of the Roman Empire and the number of Christians encreased wonderfully every day and in every place by the preaching of the Apostles and Evangelists a great part of that successe may reasonably be attributed to the contempt into which the Priests of the Gentiles of that time had brought themselves by their uncleannesse avarice and jugling between Princes Also the Religion of the Church of Rome was partly for the same cause abolished in England and many other parts of Christendome insomuch as the fayling of Vertue in the Pastors maketh Faith faile in the People and partly from bringing of the Philosophy and doctrine of Aristotle into Religion by the Schoole-men from whence there arose so many contradictions and absurdities as brought the Clergy into a reputation both of Ignorance and of Fraudulent intention and enclined people to revolt from them either against the will of their own Princes as in France and Holland or with their will as in England Lastly amongst the points by the Church of Rome declared necessary for Salvation there be so many manifestly to the advantage of the Pope and of his spirituall subjects residing in the territories of other Christian Princes that were it not for the mutuall emulation of those Princes they might without warre or trouble exclude all forraign Authority as easily as it has been excluded in England For who is there that does not see to whose benefit it conduceth to have it believed that a King hath not his Authority from Christ unlesse a Bishop crown him That a King if he be a Priest cannot Marry That whether a Prince be born in lawfull Marriage or not must be judged by Authority from Rome That Subjects may be freed from their Alleageance if by the Court of Rome the King be judged an Heretique That a King as Chilperique of France may be deposed by a Pope as Pope Zachary for no cause and his Kingdome given to one of his Subjects That the Clergy and Regulars in what Country soever shall be exempt from the Jurisdiction of their King in cases criminall Or who does not see to whose profit redound the Fees of private Masses and Vales of Purgatory with other signes of private interest enough to mortifie the most lively Faith if as I sayd the civill Magistrate and Custome did not more sustain it than any opinion they have of the Sanctity Wisdome or Probity of their Teachers So that I may attribute all the changes of Religion in the world to one and the same cause and
be Unjust But when a Covenant is made then to break it is Unjust And the definition of INIUSTICE is no other than the not Performance of Covenant And whatsoever is not Unjust is Just. But because Covenants of mutuall trust where there is a feare of not performance on either part as hath been said in the former Chapter are invalid though the Originall of Justice be the making of Covenants yet Injustice actually there can be none till the cause of such feare be taken away which while men are in the naturall condition of Warre cannot be done Therefore before the names of Just and Unjust can have place there must be some coërcive Power to compell men equally to the performance of their Covenants by the terrour of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their Covenant and to make good that Propriety which by mutuall Contract men acquire in recompence of the universall Right they abandon and such power there is none before the erection of a Common-wealth And this is also to be gathered out of the ordinary definition of Justice in the Schooles For they say that Justice is the constant Will of giving to every man his own And therefore where there is no Own that is no Propriety there is no Injustice and where there is no coërceive Power erected that is where there is no Common-wealth there is no Propriety all men having Right to all things Therefore where there is no Common-wealth there nothing is Unjust So that the nature of Justice consisteth in keeping of valid Covenants but the Validity of Covenants begins not but with the Constitution of a Civill Power sufficient to compell men to keep them And then it is also that Propriety begins The Foole hath fayd in his heart there is no such thing as Justice and sometimes also with his tongue seriously alleaging that every mans conservation and contentment being committed to his own care there could be no reason why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto and therefore also to make or not make keep or not keep Covenants was not against Reason when it conduced to ones benefit He does not therein deny that there be Covenants and that they are sometimes broken sometimes kept and that such breach of them may be called Injustice and the observance of them Justice but he questioneth whether Injustice taking away the feare of God for the same Foole hath said in his heart there is no God may not sometimes stand with that Reason which dictateth to every man his own good and particularly then when it conduceth to such a benefit as shall put a man in a condition to neglect not onely the dispraise and revilings but also the power of other men The Kingdome of God is gotten by violence but what if it could be gotten by unjust violence were it against Reason so to get it when it is impossible to receive hurt by it and if it be not against Reason it is not against Justice or else Justice is not to be approved for good From such reasoning as this Succesfull wickednesse hath obtained the name of Vertue and some that in all other things have disallowed the violation of Faith yet have allowed it when it is for the getting of a Kingdome And the Heathen that believed that Saturn was deposed by his son Jupiter believed neverthelesse the same Jupiter to be the avenger of Injustice Somewhat like to a piece of Law in Cokes Commentaries on Litleton where he sayes If the right Heire of the Crown be attainted of Treason yet the Crown shall descend to him and eo instante the Atteynder be voyd From which instances a man will be very prone to inferre that when the Heire apparent of a Kingdome shall kill him that is in possession though his father you may call it Injustice or by what other name you will yet it can never be against Reason seeing all the voluntary actions of men tend to the benefit of themselves and those actions are most Reasonable that conduce most to their ends This specious reasoning is neverthelesse false For the question is not of promises mutuall where there is no security of performance on either side as when there is no Civill Power erected over the parties promising for such promises are no Covenants But either where one of the parties has performed already or where there is a Power to make him performe there is the question whether it be against reason that is against the benefit of the other to performe or not And I say it is not against reason For the manifestation whereof we are to consider First that when a man doth a thing which notwithstanding any thing can be foreseen and reckoned on tendeth to his own destruction howsoever some accident which he could not expect arriving may turne it to his benefit yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done Secondly that in a condition of Warre wherein every man to every man for want of a common Power to keep them all in awe is an Enemy there is no man can hope by his own strength or wit to defend himselfe from destruction without the help of Confederates where every one expects the same defence by the Confederation that any one else does and therefore he which declares he thinks it reason to deceive those that help him can in reason expect no other means of safety than what can be had from his own single Power He therefore that breaketh his Covenant and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so cannot be received into any Society that unite themselves for Peace and Defence but by the errour of them that receive him nor when he is received be retayned in it without seeing the danger of their errour which errours a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security and therefore if he be left or cast out of Society he perisheth and if he live in Society it is by the errours of other men which he could not foresee nor reckon upon and consequently against the reason of his preservation and so as all men that contribute not to his destruction forbear him onely out of ignorance of what is good for themselves As for the Instance of gaining the secure and perpetuall felicity of Heaven by any way it is frivolous there being but one way imaginable and that is not breaking but keeping of Covenant And for the other Instance of attaining Soveraignty by Rebellion it is manifest that though the event follow yet because it cannot reasonably be expected but rather the contrary and because by gaining it so others are taught to gain the same in like manner the attempt thereof is against reason Justice therefore that is to say Keeping of Covenant is a Rule of Reason by which we are forbidden to do any thing destructive to our life and consequently a Law of Nature There be some that proceed
yet if we consider the same Theoremes as delivered in the word of God that by right commandeth all things then are they properly called Lawes CHAP. XVI Of PERSONS AUTHORS and things Personated A PERSON is he whose words or actions are considered either as his own or as representing the words or actions of an other man or of any other thing to whom they are attributed whether Truly or by Fiction When they are considered as his owne then is he called a Naturall Person And when they are considered as representing the words and actions of an other then is he a Feigned or Artificiall person The word Person is latine insteed whereof the Greeks have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies the Face as Persona in latine signifies the disguise or outward appearance of a man counterfeited on the Stage and somtimes more particularly that part of it which disguiseth the face as a Mask or Visard And from the Stage hath been translated to any Representer of speech and action as well in Tribunalls as Theaters So that a Person is the same that an Actor is both on the Stage and in common Conversation and to Personate is to Act or Represent himselfe or an other and he that acteth another is said to beare his Person or act in his name in which sence Cicero useth it where he saies Unus sustineo tres Personas Mei Adversarii Judicis I beare three Persons my own my Adversaries and the Judges and is called in diverse occasions diversly as a Representer or Representative a Lieutenant a Vicar an Attorney a Deputy a Procurator an Actor and the like Of Persons Artificiall some have their words and actions Owned by those whom they represent And then the Person is the Actor and he that owneth his words and actions is the AUTHOR In which case the Actor acteth by Authority For that which in speaking of goods and possessions is called an Owner and in latine Dominus in Greeke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 speaking of Actions is called Author And as the Right of possession is called Dominion so the Right of doing any Action is called AUTHORITY So that by Authority is alwayes understood a Right of doing any act and done by Authority done by Commssiion or Licence from him whose right it is From hence it followeth that when the Actor maketh a Covenant by Authority he bindeth thereby the Author no lesse than if he had made it himselfe and no lesse subjecteth him to all the consequences of the same And therfore all that hath been said formerly Chap. 14. of the nature of Covenants between man and man in their naturall capacity is true also when they are made by their Actors Representers or Procurators that have authority from them so far-forth as is in their Commission but no farther And therefore he that maketh a Covenant with the Actor or Representer not knowing the Authority he hath doth it at his own perill For no man is obliged by a Covenant whereof he is not Author nor consequently by a Covenant made against or beside the Authority he gave When the Actor doth any thing against the Law of Nature by command of the Author if he be obliged by former Covenant to obey him not he but the Author breaketh the Law of Nature for though the Action be against the Law of Nature yet it is not his but contrarily to refuse to do it is against the Law of Nature that forbiddeth breach of Covenant And he that maketh a Covenant with the Author by mediation of the Actor not knowing what Authority he hath but onely takes his word in case such Authority be not made manifest unto him upon demand is no longer obliged For the Covenant made with the Author is not valid without his Counter-assurance But if he that so Covenanteth knew before hand he was to expect no other assurance than the Actors word then is the Covenant valid because the Actor in this case maketh himselfe the Author And therefore as when the Authority is evident the Covenant obligeth the Author not the Actor so when the Authority is feigned it obligeth the Actor onely there being no Author but himselfe There are few things that are uncapable of being represented by Fiction Inanimate things as a Church an Hospital a Bridge may be Personated by a Rector Master or Overseer But things Inanimate cannot be Authors nor therefore give Authority to their Actors Yet the Actors may have Authority to procure their maintenance given them by those that are Owners or Governours of those things And therefore such things cannot be Personated before there be some state of Civill Government Likewise Children Fooles and Mad-men that have no use of Reason may be Personated by Guardians or Curators but can be no Authors during that time of any action done by them longer then when they shall recover the use of Reason they shall judge the same reasonable Yet during the Folly he that hath right of governing them may give Authority to the Guardian But this again has no place but in a State Civill because before such estate there is no Dominion of Persons An Idol or meer Figment of the brain may be Personated as were the Gods of the Heathen which by such Officers as the State appointed were Personated and held Possessions and other Goods and Rights which men from time to time dedicated and consecrated unto them But Idols cannot be Authors for an Idol is nothing The Authority proceeded from the State and therefore before introduction of Civill Government the Gods of the Heathen could not be Personated The true God may be Personated As he was first by Moses who governed the Israelites that were not his but Gods people not in his own name with Hoc dicit Moses but in Gods Name with Hoc dicit Dominus Secondly by the Son of man his own Son our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ that came to reduce the Jewes and induce all Nations into the Kingdome of his Father not as of himselfe but as sent from his Father And thirdly by the Holy Ghost or Comforter speaking and working in the Apostles which Holy Ghost was a Comforter that came not of himselfe but was sent and proceeded from them both A Multitude of men are made One Person when they are by one man or one Person Represented so that it be done with the consent of every one of that Multitude in particular For it is the Unity of the Representer not the Unity of the Represented that maketh the Person One. And it is the Representer that beareth the Person and but one Person And Unity cannot otherwise be understood in Multitude And because the Multitude naturally is not One but Many they cannot be understood for one but many Authors of every thing their Representative saith or doth in their name Every man giving their common Representer Authority from himselfe in particular
a Monarch that hath the Soveraign Authority that is to say who shall determine of the right of Inheritance for Elective Kings and Princes have not the Soveraign Power in propriety but in use only we are to consider that either he that is in possession has right to dispose of the Succession or else that right is again in the dissolved Multitude For the death of him that hath the Soveraign power in propriety leaves the Multitude without any Soveraign at all that is without any Representative in whom they should be united and be capable of doing any one action at all And therefore they are incapable of Election of any new Monarch every man having equall right to submit himselfe to such as he thinks best able to protect him or if he can protect himselfe by his owne sword which is a returne to Confusion and to the condition of a War of every man against every man contrary to the end for which Monarchy had its first Institution Therfore it is manifest that by the Institution of Monarchy the disposing of the Successor is alwaies left to the Judgment and Will of the present Possessor And for the question which may arise sometimes who it is that the Monarch in possession hath designed to the succession and inheritance of his power it is determined by his expresse Words and Testament or by other tacite signes sufficient By expresse Words or Testament when it is declared by him in life time viva voce or by Writing as the first Emperours of Rome declared who should be their Heires For the word Heire does not of it selfe imply the Children or nearest Kindred of a man but whomsoever a man shall any way declare he would have to succeed him in his Estate If therefore a Monarch declare expresly that such a man shall be his Heire either by Word or Writing then is that man immediatly after the decease of his Predecessor Invested in the right of being Monarch But where Testament and expresse Words are wanting other naturall signes of the Will are to be followed whereof the one is Custome And therefore where the Custome is that the next of Kindred absolutely succeedeth there also the next of Kindred hath right to the Succession for that if the will of him that was in posession had been otherwise he might easily have declared the same in his life time And likewise where the Custome is that the next of the Male Kindred succeedeth there also the right of Succession is in the next of the Kindred Male for the same reason And so it is if the Custome were to advance the Female For whatsoever Custome a man may by a word controule and does not it is a naturall signe he would have that Custome stand But where neither Custome nor Testament hath preceded there it is to be understood First that a Monarchs will is that the government remain Monarchicall because he hath approved that government in himselfe Secondly that a Child of his own Male or Female be preferred before any other because men are presumed to be more enclined by nature to advance their own children than the children of other men and of their own rather a Male than a Female because men are naturally fitter than women for actions of labour and danger Thirdly where his own Issue faileth rather a Brother than a stranger and so still the neerer in bloud rather than the more remote because it is alwayes presumed that the neerer of kin is the neerer in affection and 't is evident that a man receives alwayes by reflexion the most honour from the greatnesse of his neerest kindred But if it be lawfull for a Monarch to dispose of the Succession by words of Contract or Testament men may perhaps object a great inconvenience for he may sell or give his Right of governing to a stranger which because strangers that is men not used to live under the same government nor speaking the same language do commonly undervalue one another may turn to the oppression of his Subjects which is indeed a great inconvenience but it proceedeth not necessarily from the subjection to a strangers government but from the unskilfulnesse of the Governours ignorant of the true rules of Politiques And therefore the Romans when they had subdued many Nations to make their Government digestible were wont to take away that grievance as much as they thought necessary by giving sometimes to whole Nations and sometimes to Principall men of every Nation they conquered not onely the Privileges but also the Name of Romans and took many of them into the Senate and Offices of charge even in the Roman City And this was it our most wise King King James aymed at in endeavouring the Union of his two Realms of England and Scotland Which if he could have obtained had in all likelihood prevented the Civill warres which make both those Kingdomes at this present miserable It is not therefore any injury to the people for a Monarch to dispose of the Succession by Will though by the fault of many Princes it hath been sometimes found inconvenient Of the lawfulnesse of it this also is an argument that whatsoever inconvenience can arrive by giving a Kingdome to a stranger may arrive also by so marrying with strangers as the Right of Succession may descend upon them yet this by all men is accounted lawfull CHAP. XX. Of Dominion PATERNALL and DESPOTICALL A Common-wealth by Acquisition is that where the Soveraign Power is acquired by Force And it is acquired by force when men singly or many together by plurality of voyces for fear of death or bonds do authorise all the actions of that Man or Assembly that hath their lives and liberty in his Power And this kind of Dominion or Soveraignty differeth from Soveraignty by Institution onely in this That men who choose their Soveraign do it for fear of one another and not of him whom they Institute But in this case they subject themselves to him they are afraid of In both cases they do it for fear which is to be noted by them that hold all such Covenants as proceed from fear of death or violence voyd which if it were true no man in any kind of Common-wealth could be obliged to Obedience It is true that in a Common-wealth once Instituted or acquired Promises proceeding from fear of death or violence are no Covenants nor obliging when the thing promised is contrary to the Lawes But the reason is not because it was made upon fear but because he that promiseth hath no right in the thing promised Also when he may lawfully performe and doth not it is not the Invalidity of the Covenant that absolveth him but the Sentence of the Soveraign Otherwise whensoever a man lawfully promiseth he unlawfully breaketh But when the Soveraign who is the Actor acquitteth him then he is acquitted by him that extorted the promise as by the Author of such absolution But the
the Fundamentall Lawes to the molestation of the Common-wealth like the little Wormes which Physicians call Ascarides We may further adde the insatiable appetite or Bulimia of enlarging Dominion with the incurable Wounds thereby many times received from the enemy And the Wens of ununited conquests which are many times a burthen and with lesse danger lost than kept As also the Lethargy of Ease and Consumption of Riot and Vain Expence Lastly when in a warre forraign or intestine the enemies get a finall Victory so as the forces of the Common-wealth keeping the field no longer there is no farther protection of Subjects in their loyaly then is the Common-wealth DISSOLVED and every man at liberty to protect himselfe by such courses as his own discretion shall suggest unto him For the Soveraign is the publique Soule giving Life and Motion to the Common-wealth which expiring the Members are governed by it no more than the Carcasse of a man by his departed though Immortall Soule For though the Right of a Soveraign Monarch cannot be extinguished by the act of another yet the Obligation of the members may For he that wants protection may seek it any where and when he hath it is obliged without fraudulent pretence of having submitted himselfe out of fear to protect his Protection as long as he is able But when the Power of an Assembly is once suppressed the Right of the same perisheth utterly because the Assembly it selfe is extinct and consequently there is no possibility for the Soveraignty to re-enter CHAP. XXX Of the OFFICE of the Soveraign Representative THe OFFICE of the Soveraign be it a Monarch or an Assembly consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the Soveraign Power namely the procuration of the safety of the people to which he is obliged by the Law of Nature and to render an account thereof to God the Author of that Law and to none but him But by Safety here is not meant a bare Preservation but also all other Contentments of life which every man by lawfull Industry without danger or hurt to the Common-wealth shall acquire to himselfe And this is intended should be done not by care applyed to Individualls further than their protection from injuries when they shall complain but by a generall Providence contained in publique Instruction both of Doctrine and Example and in the making and executing of good Lawes to which individuall persons may apply their own cases And because if the essentiall Rights of Soveraignty specified before in the eighteenth Chapter be taken away the Common-wealth is thereby dissolved and every man returneth into the condition and calamity of a warre with every other man which is the greatest evill that can happen in this life it is the Office of the Soveraign to maintain those Rights entire and consequently against his duty First to transferre to another or to lay from himselfe any of them For he that deserteth the Means deserteth the Ends and he deserteth the Means that being the Soveraign acknowledgeth himselfe subject to the Civill Lawes and renounceth the Power of Supreme Judicature or of making Warre or Peace by his own Authority or of Judging of the Necessities of the Common-wealth or of levying Mony and Souldiers when and as much as in his own conscience he shall judge necessary or of making Officers and Ministers both of Warre and Peace or of appointing Teachers and examining what Doctrines are conformable or contrary to the Defence Peace and Good of the people Secondly it is against his Duty to let the people be ignorant or mis-informed of the grounds and reasons of those his essentiall Rights because thereby men are easie to be seduced and drawn to resist him when the Common-wealth shall require their use and exercise And the grounds of these Rights have the rather need to be diligently and truly taught because they cannot be maintained by any Civill Law or terrour of legall punishment For a Civill Law that shall forbid Rebellion and such is all resistance to the essentiall Rights of Soveraignty is not as a Civill Law any obligation but by vertue onely of the Law of Nature that forbiddeth the violation of Faith which naturall obligation if men know not they cannot know the Right of any Law the Soveraign maketh And for the Punishment they take it but for an act of Hostility which when they think they have strength enough they will endeavour by acts of Hostility to avoyd As I have heard some say that Justice is but a word without substance and that whatsoever a man can by force or art acquire to himselfe not onely in the condition of warre but also in a Common-wealth is his own which I have already shewed to be false So there be also that maintain that there are no grounds nor Principles of Reason to sustain those essentiall Rights which make Soveraignty absolute For if there were they would have been found out in some place or other whereas we see there has not hitherto been any Common-wealth where those Rights have been acknowledged or challenged Wherein they argue as ill as if the Savage people of America should deny there were any grounds or Principles of Reason so to build a house as to last as long as the materials because they never yet saw any so well built Time and Industry produce every day new knowledge And as the art of well building is derived from Principles of Reason observed by industrious men that had long studied the nature of materials and the divers effects of figure and proportion long after mankind began though poorly to build So long time after men have begun to constitute Common-wealths imperfect and apt to relapse into disorder there may Principles of Reason be found out by industrious meditation to make their constitution excepting by externall violence everlasting And such are those which I have in this discourse set forth Which whether they come not into the fight of those that have Power to make use of them or be neglected by them or not concerneth my particular interest at this day very little But supposing that these of mine are not such Principles of Reason yet I am sure they are Principles from Authority of Scripture as I shall make it appear when I shall come to speak of the Kingdome of God administred by Moses over the Jewes his peculiar people by Covenant But they say again that though the Principles be right yet Common people are not of capacity enough to be made to understand them I should be glad that the Rich and Potent Subjects of a Kingdome or those that are accounted the most Learned were no lesse incapable than they But all men know that the obstructions to this kind of doctrine proceed not so much from the difficulty of the matter as from the interest of them that are to learn Potent men digest hardly any thing that setteth up a Power to bridle their affections
contriving their Titles to save the People from the shame of receiving them To have a known Right to Soveraign Power is so popular a quality as he that has it needs no more for his own part to turn the hearts of his Subjects to him but that they see him able absolutely to govern his own Family Nor on the part of his enemies but a disbanding of their Armies For the greatest and most active part of Mankind has never hetherto been well contented with the present Concerning the Offices of one Soveraign to another which are comprehended in that Law which is commonly called the Law of Nations I need not say any thing in this place because the Law of Nations and the Law of Nature is the same thing And every Soveraign hath the same Right in procuring the safety of his People that any particular man can have in procuring the safety of his own Body And the same Law that diâ—…tateth to men that have no Civil Government what they ought to do and what to avoyd in regard of one another dictateth the same to Common-wealths that is to the Consciences of Soveraign Princes and Soveraign Assemblies there being no Court of Naturall Justice but in the Conscience onely where not Man but God raigneth whose Lawes such of them as oblige all Mankind in respect of God as he is the Author of Nature are Naturall and in respect of the same God as he is King of Kings are Lawes But of the Kingdome of God as King of Kings and as King also of a peculiar People I shall speak in the rest of this discourse CHAP. XXXI Of the KINGDOME OF GOD BY NATURE THat the condition of meer Nature that is to say of absolute Liberty such as is theirs that neither are Soveraigns nor Subjects is Anarchy and the condition of Warre That the Praecepts by which men are guided to avoyd that condition are the Lawes of Nature That a Common-wealth without Soveraign Power is but a word without substance and cannot stand That Subjects owe to Soveraigns simple Obedience in all things wherein their obedience is not repugnant to the Lawes of God I have sufficiently proved in that which I have already written There wants onely for the entire knowledge of Civill duty to know what are those Lawes of God For without that a man knows not when he is commanded any thing by the Civill Power whether it be contrary to the â—…aw of God or not and so either by too much civill obedience offends the Divine Majesty or through feare of offending God transgresses the commandements of the Common-wealth To avoyd both these Rocks it is necessary to know what are the Lawes Divine And seeing the knowledge of all Law dependeth on the knowledge of the Soveraign Power I shall say something in that which followeth of the KINGDOME OF GOD. God is King let the Earth rejoyce saith the Psalmist And again God is King though the Nations be angry and he that sitteth on the Cherubins though the earth be moved Whether men will or not they must be subject alwayes to the Divine Power By denying the Existence or Providence of God men may shake off their Ease but not their Yoke But to call this Power of God which extendeth it selfe not onely to Man but also to Beasts and Plants and Bodies inanimate by the name of Kingdome is but a metaphoricall use of the word For he onely is properly said to Raigne that governs his Subjects by his Word and by promise of Rewards to those that obey it and by threatning them with Punishment that obey it not Subjects therefore in the Kingdome of God are not Bodies Inanimate nor creatures Irrationall because they understand no Precepts as his Nor Atheists nor they that believe not that God has any care of the actions of mankind because they acknowledge no Word for his nor have hope of his rewards or fear of his threatnings They therefore that believe there is a God that goeverneth the world and hath given Praecepts and propounded Rewards and Punishments to Mankind are Gods Subjects all the rest are to be understood as Enemies To rule by Words requires that such Words be manifestly made known for else they are no Lawes For to the nature of Lawes belongeth a sufficient and clear Promulgation such as may take away the excuse of Ignorance which in the Lawes of men is but of one onely kind and that is Proclamation or Promulgation by the voyce of man But God declareth his Lawes three wayes by the Dictates of Naturall Reason by Revelation and by the Voyce of some man to whom by the operation of Miracles he procureth credit with the rest From hence there ariseth a triple Word of God Rational Sensible and Prophetique to which Correspondeth a triple Hearing Right Reason Sense Supernaturall and Faith As for Sense Supernaturall which consisteth in Revelation or Inspiration there have not been any Universall Lawes so given because God speaketh not in that manner but to particular persons and to divers men divers things From the difference between the other two kinds of Gods Word Rationall and Prophetique there may be attributed to God a twofold Kingdome Naturall and Prophetique Naturall wherein he governeth as many of Mankind as acknowledge his Providence by the naturall Dictates of Right Reason And Prophetique wherein having chosen out one peculiar Nation the Jewes for his Subjects he governed them and none but them not onely by naturall Reason but by Positive Lawes which he gave them by the mouths of his holy Prophets Of the Naturall Kingdome of God I intend to speak in this Chapter The Right of Nature whereby God reigneth over men and punisheth those that break his Lawes is to be derived not from his Creating them as if he required obedience as of Gratitude for his benefits but from his Irresistible Power I have formerly shewn how the Soveraign Right ariseth from Pact To shew how the same Right may arise from Nature requires no more but to shew in what case it is never taken away Seeing all men by Nature had Right to All things they had Right every one to reigne over all the rest But because this Right could not be obtained by force it concerned the safety of every one laying by that Right to set up men with Soveraign Authority by common consent to rule and defend them whereas if there had been any man of Power Irresistible there had been no reason why he should not by that Power have ruled and defended both himselfe and them according to his own discretion To those therefore whose Power is irresistible the dominion of all men adhaereth naturally by their excellence of Power and consequently it is from that Power that the Kingdome over men and the Right of afflicting men at his pleasure belongeth Naturally to God Almighty not as Creator and Gracious but as Omnipotent And though Punishment be due for Sinne onely because by
when the Books of Scripture were gathered into one body of the Law to the end that not the Doctrine only but the Authors also might be extant Of the Prophets the most ancient are Sophoniah Jonas Amos Hosea Isaiah and Michaiah who lived in the time of Amaziah and Azariah otherwise Ozias Kings of Judah But the Book of Jonas is not properly a Register of his Prophecy for that is contained in these few words Fourty dayes and Ninivy shall be destroyed but a History or Narration of his frowardnesse and disputing Gods commandements so that there is small probability he should be the Author seeing he is the subject of it But the Book of Amos is his Prophecy Jeremiah Abdias Nahum and Habakkuk prophecyed in the time of Josiah Ezekiel Daniel Aggeus and Zacharias in the Captivity When Ioel and Malachi prophecyed is not evident by their Writings But considering the Inscriptions or Titles of their Books it is manifest enough that the whole Scripture of the Old Testament was set forth in the form we have it after the return of the Iews from their Captivity in Babylon and before the time of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus that caused it to bee translated into Greek by seventy men which were sent him out of Iudea for that purpose And if the Books of Apocrypha which are recommended to us by the Church though not for Canonicall yet for profitable Books for our instruction may in this point be credited the Scripture was set forth in the form wee have it in by Esdâ—… as may appear by that which he himself saith in the second book chapt 14. verse 21 22 c. where speaking to God he saith thus Thy law is burnt therefore no man knoweth the things which thou hast done or the works that are to begin But if I have found Grace before thee send down the holy Spirit into me and I shall write all that hath been done in the world since the beginning which were written in thy Law that men may find thy path and that they which will live in the later days may live And verse 45. And it came to passe when the forty dayes were fulfilled that the Highest spake saying The first that thou hast written publish openly that the worthy and unworthy may read it but keep the seventy last that thou mayst deliver them onely to such as be wise among the people And thus much concerning the time of the writing of the Bookes of the Old Testament The Writers of the New Testament lived all in lesse then an age after Christs Ascension and had all of them seen our Saviour or been his Disciples except St. Paul and St. Luke and consequently whatsoever was written by them is as ancient as the time of the Apostles But the time wherein the Books of the New Testament were received and acknowledged by the Church to be of their writing is not altogether so ancient For as the Bookes of the Old Testament are derived to us from no other time then that of Esdras who by the direction of Gods Spirit retrived them when they were lost Those of the New Testament of which the copies were not many nor could easily be all in any one private mans hand cannot bee derived from a higher time than that wherein the Governours of the Church collected approved and recommended them to us as the writings of those Apostles and Disciples under whose names they go The first enumeration of all the Bookes both of the Old and New Testament is in the Canons of the Apostles supposed to be collected by Clement the first after St. Peter Bishop of Rome But because that is but supposed and by many questioned the Councell of Laodicea is the first we know that recommended the Bible to the then Christian Churches for the Writings of the Prophets and Apostles and this Councell was held in the 364. yeer after Christ. At which time though ambition had so far prevailed on the great Doctors of the Church as no more to esteem Emperours though Christian for the Shepherds of the people but for Sheep and Emperours not Christian for Wolves and endeavoured to passe their Doctrine not for Counsell and Information as Preachers but for Laws as absolute Governours and thought such frauds as tended to make the people the more obedient to Christian Doctrine to be pious yet I am perswaded they did not therefore falsifie the Scriptures though the copies of the Books of the New Testament were in the hands only of the Ecclesiasticks because if they had had an intention so to doe they would surely have made them more favorable to their power over Christian Princes and Civill Soveraignty than they are I see not therefore any reason to doubt but that the Old and New Testament as we have them now are the true Registers of those things which were done and said by the Prophets and Apostles And so perhaps are some of those Books which are called Apocrypha and left out of the Canon not for inconformity of Doctrine with the rest but only because they are not found in the Hebrew For after the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great there were few learned Jews that were not perfect in the Greek tongue For the seventy Interpreters that converted the Bible into Greek were all of them Hebrews and we have extant the works of Philo and Josephus both Jews written by them eloquently in Greek But it is not the Writer but the authority of the Church that maketh a Book Canonicall And although these Books were written by divers men yet it is manifest the Writers were all indued with one and the same Spirit in that they conspire to one and the same end which is the setting forth of the Rights of the Kingdome of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost For the Book of Genesis deriveth the Genealogy of Gods people from the creation of the World to the going into Egypt the other four Books of Moses contain the Election of God for their King and the Laws which hee prescribed for their Government The Books of Joshua Judges Ruth and Samuel to the time of Saul describe the acts of Gods people till the time they cast off Gods yoke and called for a King after the manner of their neighbour nations The rest of the History of the Old Testament derives the succession of the line of David to the Captivity out of which line was to spring the restorer of the Kingdome of God even our blessed Saviour God the Son whose coming was foretold in the Bookes of the Prophets after whom the Evangelists write his life and actions and his claim to the Kingdome whilst he lived on earth and lastly the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles declare the coming of God the Holy Ghost and the Authority he left with them and their successors for the direction of the Jews and for the invitation of the Gentiles In summe the Histories and the Prophecies of the old Testament
possession And for a memoriall and a token of this Covenant he ordaineth verse II. the Sacrament of Circumcision This is it which is called the Old Covenant or Testament and containeth a Contract between God and Abraham by which Abraham obligeth himself and his posterity in a peculiar manner to be subject to Gods positive Law for to the Law Morall he was obliged before as by an Oath of Allegiance And though the name of King be not yet given to God nor of Kingdome to Abraham and his seed yet the thing is the same namely an Institution by pact of Gods peculiar Soveraignty over the seed of Abraham which in the renewing of the same Covenant by Moses at Mount Sinai is expressely called a peculiar Kingdome of God over the Jews and it is of Abraham not of Moses St. Paul saith Rom. 4. 11. that he is the Father of the Faithfull that is of those that are loyall and doe not violate their Allegiance sworn to God then by Circumcision and afterwards in the New Covenant by Baptisme This Covenant at the Foot of Mount Sinai was renewed by Moses Exod. 19. 5. where the Lord commandeth Moses to speak to the people in this manner If you will obey my voice indeed and keep my Covenant then yee shall be a peculiar people to me for all the Earth is mine And yee shall be unto me a Sacerdotall Kingdome and an holy Nation For a Peculiar people the vulgar Latine hath Peculium de cunctis populis the English Translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King James hath a Peculiar treasure unto me above all Nations and the Geneva French the most precious Iewel of all Nations But the truest Translation is the first because it is confirmed by St. Paul himself Tit. 2. 14. where he saith alluding to that place that our blessed Saviour gave himself for us that he might purifie us to himself a peculiar that is an extraordinary people for the word is in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is opposed commonly to the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and as this signifieth ordinary quotidian or as in the Lords Prayer of daily use so the other signifieth that which is overplus and stored up and enjoyed in a speciall manner which the Latines call Peculium and this meaning of the place is confirmed by the reason God rendereth of it which followeth immediately in that he addeth For all the Earth is mine as if he should say All the Nations of the world are mine but it is not so that you are mine but in a speciall manner For they are all mine by reason of my Power but you shall be mine by your own Consent and Covenant which is an addition to his ordinary title to all nations The same is again confirmed in expresse words in the same text Yee shall be to me a Sacerdotall Kingdome and an holy Nation The Vulgar Latine hath it Regnum Sacerdotale to which agreeth the Translation of that place 1 Pet. 2. 9. Sacerdotium Regale a Regal Priesthood as also the Institution it self by which no man might enter into the Sanctum Sanctorum that is to say no man might enquire Gods will immediately of God himselfe but onely the High Priest The English Translation before mentioned following that of Geneva has a Kingdom of Priests which is either meant of the succession of one High Priest after another or else it accordeth not with St. Peter nor with the exercise of the High priesthood For there was never any but the High priest onely that was to informe the People of Gods Will nor any Convocation of Priests ever allowed to enter into the Sanctum Sanctorum Again the title of a Holy Nation confirmes the same For Holy signifies that which is Gods by speciall not by generall Right All the Earth as is said in the text is Gods but all the Earth is not called Holy but that onely which is set apart for his especiall service as was the Nation of the Jews It is therefore manifest enough by this one place that by the Kingdome of God is properly meant a Common-wealth instituted by the consent of those which were to be subject thereto for their Civill Government and the regulating of their behaviour not onely towards God their King but also towards one another in point of justice and towards other Nations both in peace and warre which properly was a Kingdome wherein God was King and the High priest was to be after the death of Moses his sole Viceroy or Lieutenant But there be many other places that clearly prove the same As first 1 Sam. 8. 7. when the Elders of Israel grieved with the corruption of the Sons of Samuel demanded a King Samuel displeased therewith prayed unto the Lord and the Lord answering said unto him Hearken unto the voice of the People for they have not rejected thee but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them Out of which it is evident that God himself was then their King and Samuel did not command the people but only delivered to them that which God from time to time appointed him Again 1 Sam. 12. 12. where Samuel saith to the People When yee saw that Nahash King of the Children of Ammon came against you ye said unto me Nay but a King shall reign over us when the Lord your God was your King It is manifest that God was their King and governed the Civill State of their Common-wealth And after the Israelites had rejected God the Prophets did foretell his restitution as Isaiah 24. 23. Then the Moon shall be confounded and the Sun ashamed when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion and in Ierusalem where he speaketh expressely of his Reign in Zion and Jerusalem that is on Earth And Micah 4. 7. And the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion This Mount Zion is in Jerusalem upon the Earth And Ezek. 20. 33. As I live saith the Lord God surely with a mighty hand and a stretched out arme and with fury powred out I wil rule over you and verse 37. I will cause you to passe under the rod and I will bring you into the bond of the Covenant that is I will reign over you and make you to stand to that Covenant which you made with me by Moses and brake in your rebellion against me in the days of Samuel and in your election of another King And in the New Testament the Angel Gabriel saith of our Saviour Luke 1. 32 33. He shall be great and be called the Son of the most High and the Lord shall give him the throne of his Father David and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever and of his Kingdome there shall be no end This is also a Kingdome upon Earth for the claim whereof as an enemy to Caesar he was put to death the title of his crosse was Iesus of Nazareth King of the Iews hee was crowned in
speaking by the Spirit or Inspiration was not a particular manner of Gods speaking different from Vision when they that were said to speak by the Spirit were extraordinary Prophets such as for every new message were to have a particular Commission or which is all one a new Dream or Vision Of Prophets that were so by a perpetuall Calling in the Old Testament some were supreme and some subordinate Supreme were first Moses and after him the High Priests every one for his time as long as the Priesthood was Royall and after the people of the Jews had rejected God that he should no more reign over them those Kings which submitted themselves to Gods government were also his chief Prophets and the High Priests oâ—…fice became Ministeriall And when God was to be consulted they put on the holy vestments and enquired of the Lord as the King commanded them and were deprived of their office when the King thought fit For King Saul 1 Sam. 13. 9. commanded the burnt offering to be brought and 1 Sam. 14. 18. he commands the Priest to bring the Ark neer him and ver 19. again to let it alone because he saw an advantage upon his enemies And in the same chapter Saul asketh counsell of God In like manner King David after his being anointed though before he had possession of the Kingdome is said to enquire of the Lord 1 Sam. 23. 2. whether he should fight against the Philistines at Keilah and verse 10. David commandeth the Priest to bring him the Ephod to enquire whether he should stay in Keilah or not And King Solomon 1 Kings 2. 27. took the Priesthood from Abiathar and gave it verse 35. to Zadoc Therefore Moses and the High Priests and the pious Kings who enquired of God on all extraordinary occasions how they were to carry themselves or what event they were to have were all Soveraign Prophets But in what manner God spake unto them is not manifest To say that when Moses went up to God in Mount Sinai it was a Dream or Vision such as other Prophets had is contrary to that distinction which God made between Moses and other Prophets Numb 12. 6 7 8. To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature is to deny his Infinitenesse Invisibility Incomprehensibility To say he spake by Inspiration or Infusion of the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit signifieth the Deity is to make Moses equall with Christ in whom onely the Godhead as St. Paul speaketh Col. 2. 9. dwelleth bodily And lastly to say he spake by the Holy Spirit as it signifieth the graces or gifts of the Holy Spirit is to attribute nothing to him supernaturall For God disposeth men to Piety Justice Mercy Truth Faith and all manner of Vertue both Morall and Intellectuall by doctrine example and by severall occasions naturall and ordinary And as these ways cannot be applyed to God in his speaking to Moses at Mouut Sinai so also they cannot be applyed to him in his speaking to the High Priests from the Mercy-Seat Therefore in what manner God spake to those Soveraign Prophets of the Old Testament whose office it was to enquire of him is not intelligible In the time of the New Testament there was no Soveraign Prophet but our Saviour who was both God that spake and the Prophet to whom he spake To subordinate Prophets of perpetuall Calling I find not any place that proveth God spake to them supernaturally but onely in such manner as naturally he inclineth men to Piety to Beleef to Righteousnesse and to other vertues all other Christian men Which way though it consist in Constitution Instruction Education and the occasions and invitements men have to Christian vertues yet it is truly attributed to the operation of the Spirit of God or Holy Spirit which we in our language call the Holy Ghost For there is no good inclination that is not of the operation of God But these operations are not alwaies supernaturall When therefore a Prophet is said to speak in the Spirit or by the Spirit of God we are to understand no more but that he speaks according to Gods will declared by the supreme Prophet For the most common acceptation of the word Spirit is in the signification of a mans intention mind or disposition In the time of Moses there were seventy men besides himself that Prophecyed in the Campe of the Israelites In what manner God spake to them is declared in the 11 of Numbers verse 25. The Lord came down in a cloud and spake unto Moses and took of the Spirit that was upon him and gave it to the seventy Elders And it came to passe when the Spirit rested upon them they Prophecyed and did not cease By which it is manifest first that their Prophecying to the people was subservient and subordinate to the Prophecying of Moses for that God took of the Spirit of Moses to put upon them so that they Prophecyed as Moses would have them otherwise they had not been suffered to Prophecy at all For there was verse 27. a complaint made against them to Moses and Joshua would have Moses to have forbidden them which he did not but said to Joshua Bee not jealous in my behalf Secondly that the Spirit of God in that place signifieth nothing but the Mind and Disposition to obey and assist Moses in the administration of the Government For if it were meant they had the substantiall Spirit of God that is the Divine nature inspired into them then they had it in no lesse manner then Christ himself in whom onely the Spirit of God dwelt bodily It is meant therefore of the Gift and Grace of God that guided them to co-operate with Moses from whom their Spirit was derived And it appeareth verse 16. that they were such as Moses himself should appoint for Elders and Officers of the People For the words are Gather unto me seventy men whom thou knowest to be Elders and Officers of the people where thou knowest is the same with thou appointest or hast appointed to be such For we are told before Exod. 18. that Moses following the counsell of Jethro his Father-in-law did appoint Judges and Officers over the people such as feared God and of these were those Seventy whom God by putting upon them Moses spirit inclined to aid Moses in the Administration of the Kingdome and in this sense the Spirit of God is said 1 Sam. 16. 13 14. presently upon the anointing of David to have come upon David and left Saul God giving his graces to him he chose to govern his people and taking them away from him he rejected So that by the Spirit is meant Inclination to Gods service and not any supernaturall Revelation God spake also many times by the event of Lots which were ordered by such as he had put in Authority over his people So wee read that God manifested by the Lots which Saul caused to be drawn 1 Sam. 14. 43. the
us And therefore in the Holy Scripture Remission of Sinne and Salvation from Death and Misery is the same thing as it appears by the words of our Saviour who having cured a man sick of the Palsey by saying Mat. 9. 2. Son be of good cheer thy Sins be forgiven thee and knowing that the Scribes took for blasphemy that a man should pretend to forgive Sins asked them v. 5. whether it were easier to say Thy Sinnes be forgiven thee or Arise and walk signifying thereby that it was all one as to the saving of the sick to say Thy Sins are forgiven and Arise and walk and that he used that form of speech onely to shew he had power to forgive Sins And it is besides evident in reason that since Death and Misery were the punishments of Sin the discharge of Sinne must also be a discharge of Death and Misery that is to say Salvation absolute such as the faithfull are to enjoy after the day of Judgment by the power and favour of Jesus Christ who for that cause is called our SAVIOUR Concerning Particular Salvations such as are understood 1 Sam. 14. 39. as the Lord liveth that saveth Israel that is from their temporary enemies and 2 Sam. 22. 4. Thou art my Saviour thou savest me from violence and 2 Kings 13. 5. God gave the Israelites a Saviour and so they were delivered from the hand of the Assyrians and the like I need say nothing there being neither difficulty nor interest to corrupt the interpretation of texts of that kind But concerning the Generall Salvation hecause it must be in the Kingdome of Heaven there is great difficulty concerning the Place On one side by Kingdome which is an estate ordained by men for their perpetuall security against enemies and want it seemeth that this Salvation should be on Earth For by Salvation is set forth unto us a glorious Reign of our King by Conquest not a safety by Escape and therefore there where we look for Salvation we must look also for Triumph and before Triumph for Victory and before Victory for Battell which cannot well be supposed shall be in Heaven But how good soever this reason may be I will not trust to it without very evident places of Scripture The state of Salvation is described at large Isaiah 33. ver 20 21 22 23 24. Look upon Zion the City of our solemnities thine eyes shall see Ierusalem a quiet habitation a tabernacle that shall not be taken down not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed neither shâ—…ll any of the cords thereof be broken But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams wherein shall goe no Gally with oares neither shall gallant ship passe â—…hereby For the Lord is our Iudge the Lord is our Lawgiver the Lord is our King he will save us Thy tacklings are loosed they could not well strengthen their mast they could not spread the sail then is the prey of a great spoil divided the lame take the prey And the Inhabitant shall not say I am sicke the people that shall dwell therein shall be forgiven their Iniquity In which words wee have the place from whence Salvation is to proceed Ierusalem a quiet habitation the Eternity of it a tabernacle that shall not be taken down c. The Saviour of it the Lord their Iudge their Lawgiver their King he will save us the Salvation the Lord shall be to them as abroad mote of swift waters c. the condition of their Enemies their tacklings are loose their masts weak the lame shal take the spoil of them The condition of the Saved The Inhabitant shal not say I am sick And lastly all this is comprehended in Forgivenesse of sin The people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity By which â—…t is evident that Salvation shall be on Earth then when God shall reign at the coming again of Christ in Jerusalem and from Jerusalem shall proceed the Salvation of the Gentiles that shall be received into Gods Kingdome as is also more expressely declared by the same Prophet Chap. 65. 20 21. And they that is the Gentiles who had any Jew in bondage shall bring all your brethren for an offering to the Lord out of all nations upon horses and in charets and in litters and upon mules and upon swift beasts to my holy mountain Ierusalem saith the Lord as the Children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessell into the House of the Lord. And I will also take of them for Priests and for Levâ—…tes saith the Lord Whereby it is manifest that the chief seat of Gods Kingdome which is the Place from whence the Salvation of us that were Gentiles shall proceed shall be Jerusalem And the same is also confirmed by our Saviour in his discourse with the woman of Samaria concerning the place of Gods worship to whom he saith Iohn 4. 22. that the Samaritans worshipped they knew not what but the Jews worship what they knew For Salvation is of the Iews ex Iudae is that is begins at the Jews as if he should say you worship God but know not by whom he wil save you as we doe that know it shall be by one of the tribe of Judah a Jew not a Samaritan And therefore also the woman not impertinently answered him again We know the Messias shall come So that which out Saviour saith Salvation is from the Iews is the same that Paul sayes Rom. 1. 16 17. The Gospel is the power of God to Salvation to every one that beleeveth To the Iew first and also to the Greek For therein is the righteousnesse of God revealed from faith to faith from the faith of the Jew to the faith of the Gentile In the like sense the Prophet Ioel describing the day of Judgment chap. 2. 30 31. that God 〈◊〉 shew wonders in heaven and in earth bloud and fire and pillars os smoak The Sun should be turned to darknesse and the Moon into bloud before the great and terrible day of the Lord come he addeth verse 32. and it shall come to passe that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved For in Mount Zion and in Ierusalem shall be Salvation And Obadiah verse 17. saith the same Vpon Mount Zion shall be Deliverance and there shall be holinesse and the house of Iacob shall possesse their possessions that is the possessions of the Heathen which possessions he expresseth more particularly in the following verses by the mount of Esau the Land of the Philistines the fields of Ephraim of Samaria Gilead and the Cities of the South and concludes with these words the Kingdom shall be the Lords All these places are for Salvation and the Kingdome of God after the day of Judgement upon Earth On the other side I have not found any text that can probably be drawn to prove any Ascension of the Saints into Heaven that is to say into
of them that were absent or that being present were not willing it should be done According to this sense I define a CHURCH to be A company of men professing Christian Religion united in the person of one Soveraign at whose command they ought to assemble and without whose authority they ought not to assemble And because in all Common-wealths that Assembly which is without warrant from the Civil Soveraign is unlawful that Church also which is assembled in any Common-wealth that hath forbidden them to assemble is an unlawfull Assembly It followeth also that there is on Earth no such universall Church as all Christians are bound to obey because there is no power on Earth to which all other Common-wealths are subject There are Christians in the Dominions of severall Princes and States but every one of them is subject to that Common-wealth whereof he is himself a member and consequently cannot be subject to the commands of any other Person And therefore a Church such a one as is capable to Command to Judge Absolve Condemn or do any other act is the same thing with a Civil Common-wealth consisting of Christian men and is called a Civill State for that the subjects of it are Men and a Church for that the subjects thereof are Christians Temporall and Spirituall Government are but two words brought into the world to make men see double and mistake their Lawfull Soveraign It is true that the bodies of the faithfull after the Resurrection shall be not onely Spirituall but Eternall but in this life they are grosse and corruptible There is therefore no other Government in this life neither of State nor Religion but Temporall nor teaching of any doctrine lawfull to any Subject which the Governour both of the State and of the Religion forbiddeth to be taught And that Governor must be one or else there must needs follow Faction and Civil war in the Common-wealth between the Church and State between Spiritualists and Temporalists between the Sword of Iustice and the Shield of Faith and which is more in every Christian mans own brest between the Christian and the Man The Doctors of the Church are called Pastors so also are Civill Soveraignes But if Pastors be not subordinate one to another so as that there may bee one chief Pastor men will be taught contrary Doctrines whereof both may be and one must be false Who that one chief Pastor is according to the law of Nature hath been already shewn namely that it is the Civill Soveraign And to whom the Scripture hath assigned that Office we shall see in the Chapters following CHAP. XL. Of the RIGHTS of the Kingdome of God in Abraham Moses the High Priests and the Kings of Judah THe Father of the Faithfull and first in the Kingdome of God by Covenant was Abraham For with him was the Covenant first made wherein he obliged himself and his seed after him to acknowledge and obey the commands of God not onely such as he could take notice of as Morall Laws by the light of Nature but also such as God should in speciall manner deliver to him by Dreams and Visions For as to the Morall law they were already obliged and needed not have been contracted withall by promise of the Land of Canaan Nor was there any Contract that could adde to or strengthen the Obligation by which both they and all men else were bound naturally to obey God Almighty And therefore the Covenant which Abraham made with God was to take for the Commandement of God that which in the name of God was commanded him in a Dream or Vifion and to deliver it to his family and cause them to observe the same In this Contract of God with Abraham wee may observe three points of important consequence in the government of Gods people First that at the making of this Covenant God spake onely to Abraham and therefore contracted not with any of his family or seed otherwise then as their wills which make the essence of all Covenants were before the Contract involved in the will of Abraham who was therefore supposed to have had a lawfull power to make them perform all that he covenanted for them According whereunto Gen. 18. 18 19. God saith All the Nations of the Earth shall be blessed in him For I know him that he will command his children and his houshold after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord. From whence may be concluded this first point that they to whom God hath not spoken immediately are to receive the positive commandements of God from their Soveraign as the family and seed of Abraham did from Abraham their Father and Lord and Civill Soveraign And consequently in every Common-wealth they who have no supernaturall Revelation to the contrary ought to obey the laws of their own Soveraign in the externall acts and profession of Religion As for the inward thought and beleef of men which humane Governours can take no notice of for God onely knoweth the heart they are not voluntary nor the effect of the laws but of the unrevealed will and of the power of God and consequently fall not under obligation From whence proceedeth another point that it was not unlawfull for Abraham when any of his Subjects should pretend Private Vision or Spirit or other Revelation from God for the countenancing of any doctrine which Abraham should forbid or when they followed or adhered to any such pretender to punish them and consequently that it is lawfull now for the Soveraign to punish any man that shall oppose his Private Spirit against the Laws For hee hath the same place in the Common-wealth that Abraham had in his own Family There ariseth also from the same a third point that as none but Abraham in his family so none but the Soveraign in a Christian Common-wealth can take notice what is or what is not the Word of God For God spake onely to Abraham and it was he onely that was able to know what God said and to interpret the same to his family And therefore also they that have the place of Abraham in a Common-wealth are the onely Interpreters of what God hath spoken The same Covenant was renewed with Isaac and afterwards with Jacob but afterwards no more till the Israelites were freed from the Egyptians and arrived at the Foot of Mount Sinai and then it was renewed by Moses as I have said before chap. 35. in such manner as they became from that time forward the Peculiar Kingdome of God whose Lieutenant was Moses for his owne time and the succession to that office was setled upon Aaron and his heirs after him to bee to God a Sacerdotall Kingdome for ever By this constitution a Kingdome is acquired to God But seeing Moses had no authority to govern the Israelites as a successor to the right of Abraham because he could not claim it by inheritance it appeareth not as yet that the
God that ordained such Sacrifices for sin as he was pleased in his mercy to accept In the Old Law as we may read Leviticus the 16. the Lord required that there should every year once bee made an Atonement for the Sins of all Israel both Priests and others for the doing whereof Aaron alone was to sacrifice for himself and the Priests a young Bullock and for the rest of the people he was to receive from them two young Goates of which he was to sacrifice one but as for the other which was the Scape Goat he was to lay his hands on the head thereof and by a confession of the iniquities of the people to lay them all on that head and then by some opportune man to cause the Goat to be led into the wildernesse and there to escape and carry away with him the iniquities of the people As the Sacrifice of the one Goat was a sufficient because an acceptable price for the Ransome of all Israel so the death of the Messiah is a sufficient price for the Sins of all mankind because there was no more required Our Saviour Christs sufferings seem to be here figured as cleerly as in the oblation of Isaac or in any other type of him in the Old Testament He was both the sacrificed Goat and the Scape Goat Hee was oppressed and he was afflicted Esay 53. 7. he opened not his mouth he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep is dumbe before the shearer so opened he not his mouth Here he is the sacrificed Gâ—…at He hath born our Griefs ver 4. and carried our sorrows And again ver 6. the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all And so he is the Scape Goat He was cut off from the land of the living ver 8. for the transgression of my People There again he is the sacrificed Goat And again ver 11. he shall bear their sins Hee is the Scape Goat Thus is the Lamb of God equivalent to both those Goates sacrificed in that he dyed and escaping in his Resurrection being raised opportunely by his Father and removed from the habitation of men in his Ascension For as much therefore as he that redeemeth hath no title to the thing redeemed before the Redemption and Ransome paid and this Ransome was the Death of the Redeemer it is manifest that our Saviour as man was not King of those that he Redeemed before hee suffered death that is during that time hee conversed bodily on the Earth I say he was not then King in present by vertue of the Pact which the faithfull make with him in Baptisme Neverthelesse by the renewing of their Pact with God in tisme they were obliged to obey him for King under his Father whensoever he should be pleased to take the Kingdome upon him According whereunto our Saviour himself expressely saith Iohn 18. 36. My Kingdome is not of this world Now seeing the Scripture maketh mention but of two worlds this that is now and shall remain to the day of Judgment which is therefore also called the last day and that which shall bee after the day of Judgement when there shall bee a new Heaven and a new Earth the Kingdome of Christ is not to begin till the generall Resurrection And that is it which our Saviour saith Mat. 16. 27. The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his Angels and then he shall reward every man according to his works To reward every man according to his works is to execute the Office of a King and this is not to be till he come in the glory of his Father with his Angells When our Saviour saith Mat. 23. 2. The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses seat All therefore whatsoever they bid you doe that observe and doe hee declareth plainly that hee ascribeth Kingly Power for that time not to himselfe but to them And so hee doth also where he saith Luke 12. 14. Who made mee a Iudge or Divider over you And Iohn 12. 47. I came not to judge the world but to save the world And yet our Saviour came into this world that hee might bee a King and a Judge in the world to come For hee was the Messiah that is the Christ that is the Anointed Priest and the Soveraign Prophet of God that is to say he was to have all the power that was in Moses the Prophet in the High Priests that succeeded Moses and in the Kings that succeeded the Priests And St. Iohn saies expressely chap. 5. ver 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment to the Son And this is not repugnant to that other place I came not to judge the world for this is spoken of the world present the other of the world to come as also where it is said that at the second coming of Christ Mat. 19. 28. Yee that have followed me in the Regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his Glory yee shall also sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel If then Christ whilest hee was on Earth had no Kingdome in this world to what end was his first coming It was to restore unto God by a new Covenant the Kingdom which being his by the Old Covenant had been cut off by the rebellion of the Israelites in the election of Saul Which to doe he was to preach unto them that he was the Messiah that is the King promised to them by the Prophets and to offer himselfe in sacrifice for the sinnes of them that should by faith submit themselves thereto and in case the nation generally should refuse him to call to his obedience such as should beleeve in him amongst the Gentiles So that there are two parts of our Saviours Office during his aboad upon the Earth One to Proclaim himself the Christ and another by Teaching and by working of Miracles to perswade and prepare men to live so as to be worthy of the Immortality Beleevers were to enjoy at such tiâ—…e as he should come in majesty to take possession of his Fathers Kingdome And therefore it is that the time of his preaching is often by himself called the Regeneration which is not properly a Kingdome and thereby a warrant to deny obedience to the Magistrates that then were for hee commanded to obey those that sate then in Moses chaire and to pay tribute to Caesar but onely an earnest of the Kingdome of God that was to come to those to whom God had given the grace to be his disciples and to beleeve in him For which cause the Godly are said to bee already in the Kingdome of Grace as naturalized in that heavenly Kingdome Hitherto therefore there is nothing done or taught by Christ that tendeth to the diminution of the Civill Right of the Jewes or of Caesar. For as touching the Common-wealth which then was amongst the Jews both they that bare rule amongst them
and delivered by God himselfe to Moses and by Moses made known to the people Before that time there was no written Law of God who as yet having not chosen any people to bee his peculiar Kingdome had given no Law to men but the Law of Nature that is to say the Precepts of Naturall Reason written in every mans own heart Of these two Tables the first containeth the law of Soveraignty 1. That they should not obey nor honour the Gods of other Nations in these words Non-habebis Deos alienos coram me that is Thou shalt not have for Gods the Gods that other Nations worship but onely me whereby they were forbidden to obey or honor as their King and Governour any other God than him that spake unto them then by Moses and afterwards by the High Priest 2. That they should not make any Image to represent him that is to say they were not to choose to themselves neither in heaven nor in earth any Representative of their own fancying but obey Moses and Aaron whom he had appointed to that office 3. That they should not take the Name of God in vain that is they should not speak rashly of their King nor dispute his Right nor the commissions of Moses and Aaron his Lieutenants 4. That they should every Seventh day abstain from their ordinary labour and employ that time in doing him Publique Honor. The second Table containeth the Duty of one man towards another as To honor Parents Not to kill Not to Commit Adultery Not to steale Not to corrupt Iudgment by false witnesse and finally Not so much as to designe in their heart the doing of any injury one to another The question now is Who it was that gave to these written Tables the obligatory force of Lawes There is no doubt but they were made Laws by God himselfe But because a Law obliges not nor is Law to any but to them that acknowledge it to be the act of the Soveraign how could the people of Israel that were forbidden to approach the Mountain to hear what God said to Moses be obliged to obedience to all those laws which Moses propounded to them Some of them were indeed the Laws of Nature as all the Second Table and therefore to be acknowledged for Gods Laws not to the Israelites alone but to all people But of those that were peculiar to the Israelites as those of the first Table the question remains saving that they had obliged themselves presently after the propounding of them to obey Moses in these words Exod. 20. 19. Speak thou to us and we will hear thee but let not God speak to us lest we dye It was therefore onely Moses then and after him the High Priest whom by Moses God declared should administer this his peculiar Kingdome that had on Earth the power to make this short Scripture of the Decalogue to bee Law in the Common-wealth of Israel But Moses and Aaron and the succeeding High Priests were the Civill Soveraigns Therefore hitherto the Canonizing or making of the Scripture Law belonged to the Civill Soveraigne The Judiciall Law that is to say the Laws that God prescribed to the Magistrates of Israel for the rule of their administration of Justice and of the Sentences or Judgments they should pronounce in Pleas between man and man and the Leviticall Law that is to say the rule that God prescribed touching the Rites and Ceremonies of the Priests and Levites were all delivered to them by Moses onely and therefore also became Lawes by vertue of the same promise of obedience to Moses Whether these laws were then written or not written but dictated to the People by Moses after his forty dayes being with God in the Mount by word of mouth is not expressed in the Text but they were all positive Laws and equivalent to holy Scripture and made Canonicall by Moses the Civill Soveraign After the Israelites were come into the Plains of Moab over against Jericho and ready to enter into the land of Promise Moses to the former Laws added divers others which therefore are called Deuteronomy that is Second Laws And are as it is written Deut. 29. 1. The words of a Covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Children of Israel besides the Covenant which he made with them in Horeb. For having explained those former Laws in the beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy he addeth others that begin at the 12. Cha. and continue to the end of the 26. of the same Book This Law Deut. 27. 1. they were commanded to write upon great stones playstered over at their passing over Jordan This Law also was written by Moses himself in a Book and delivered into the hands of the Priests and to the Elders of Israel Deut. 31. 9. and commanded ve 26. to be put in the side of the Arke for in the Ark it selfe was nothing but the Ten Commandements This was the Law which Moses Deuteronomy 17. 18. commanded the Kings of Israel should keep a copie of And this is the Law which having been long time lost was found again in the Temple in the time of Josiah and by his authority received for the Law of God But both Moses at the writing and Josiah at the recovery thereof had both of them the Civill Soveraignty Hitherto therefore the Power of making Scripture Canonicall was in the Civill Soveraign Besides this Book of the Law there was no other Book from the time of Moses till after the Captivity received amongst the Jews for the Law of God For the Prophets except a few lived in the time of the Captivity it selfe and the rest lived but a little before it and were so far from having their Prophecies generally received for Laws as that their persons were persecuted partly by false Prophets and partly by the Kings which were seduced by them And this Book it self which was confirmed by Josiah for the Law of God and with it all the History of the Works of God was lost in the Captivity and sack of the City of Jerusalem as appears by that of 2 Esdras 14. 21. Thy Law is burnt therefore no man knoweth the things that are done of thee or the works that shall begin And before the Captivity between the time when the Law was lost which is not mentioned in the Scripture but may probably be thought to be the time of Rehoboam when Shishak King of Egypt took the spoile of the Temple and the time of Josiah when it was found againe they had no written Word of God but ruled according to their own discretion or by the direction of such as each of them esteemed Prophets From hence we may inferre that the Scriptures of the Old Testament which we have at this day were not Canonicall nor a Law unto the Jews till the renovation of their Covenant with God at their return from the Captivity and restauration of their Common-wealth under Esdras But from that time
forward they were accounted the Law of the Jews and for such translated into Greek by Seventy Elders of Judaea and put into the Library of Ptolemy at Alexandria and approved for the Word of God Now seeing Esdras was the High Priest and the High Priest was their Civill Soveraigne it is manifest that the Scriptures were never made Laws but by the Soveraign Civill Power By the Writings of the Fathers that lived in the time before that Christian Religion was received and authorised by Constantine the Emperour we may find that the Books wee now have of the New Testament were held by the Christians of that time except a few in respect of whose paucity the rest were called the Catholique Church and others Haeretiques for the dictates of the Holy Ghost and consequently for the Canon or Rule of Faith such was the reverence and opinion they had of their Teachers as generally the reverence that the Disciples bear to their first Masters in all manner of doctrine they receive from them is not small Therefore there is no doubt but when S. Paul wrote to the Churches he had converted or any other Apostle or Disciple of Christ to those which had then embraced Christ they received those their Writings for the true Christian Doctrine But in that time when not the Power and Authority of the Teacher but the Faith of the Hearer caused them to receive it it was not the Apostles that made their own Writings Canonicall but every Convert made them so to himself But the question here is not what any Christian made a Law or Canon to himself which he might again reject by the same right he received it but what was so made a Canon to them as without injustice they could not doe any thing contrary thereunto That the New Testament should in this sense be Canonicall that is to say a Law in any place where the Law of the Common-wealth had not made it so is contrary to the nature of a Law For a Law as hath been already shewn is the Commandement of that Man or Assembly to whom we have given Soveraign Authority to make such Rules for the direction of our actions as hee shall think fit and to punish us when we doe any thing contrary to the same When therefore any other man shall offer unto us any other Rules which the Soveraign Ruler hath not prescribed they are but Counsell and Advice which whether good or bad hee that is counselled may without injustice refuse to observe and when contrary to the Laws already established without injustice cannot observe how good soever he conceiveth it to be I say he cannot in this case observe the same in his actions nor in his dicourse with other men though he may without blame beleeve his private Teachers and wish he had the liberty to practise their advice and that it were publiquely received for Law For internall Faith is in its own nature invisible and consequently exempted from all humane jurisdiction whereas the words and actions that proceeed from it as breaches of our Civill obedience are injustice both before God and Man Seeing then our Saviour hath denyed his Kingdome to be in this world seeing he had said he came not to judge but to save the world he hath not subjected us to other Laws than those of the Common-wealth that is the Jews to the Law of Moses which he saith Mat. 5. he came not to destroy but to fulfill and other Nations to the Laws of their severall Soveraigns and all men to the Laws of Nature the observing whereof both he himselfe and his Apostles have in their teaching recommended to us as a necessary condition of being admitted by him in the last day into his eternall Kingdome wherein shall be Protection and Life everlasting Seeing then our Saviour and his Apostles left not new Laws to oblige us in this world but new Doctrine to prepare us for the next the Books of the New Testament which containe that Doctrine untill obedience to them was commanded by them that God had given power to on earth to be Legislators were not obligatory Canons that is Laws but onely good and safe advice for the direction of sinners in the way to salvation which every man might take and refuse at his owne perill without injustice Again our Saviour Christs Commission to his Apostles and Disciples was to Proclaim his Kingdome not present but to come and to Teach all Nations and to Baptize them that should beleeve and to enter into the houses of them that should receive them and where they were not received to shake off the dust of their feet against them but not to call for fire from heaven to destroy them nor to compell them to obedience by the Sword In all which there is nothing of Power but of Perswasion He sent them out as Sheep unto Wolves not as Kings to their Subjects They had not in Commission to make Laws but to obey and teach obedience to Laws made and consequently they could not make their Writings obligatory Canons without the help of the Soveraign Civill Power And therefore the Scripture of the New Testament is there only Law where the lawfull Civill Power hath made it so And there also the King or Soveraign maketh it a Law to himself by which he subjecteth himselfe not to the Doctor or Apostle that converted him but to God himself and his Son Jesus Christ as immediately as did the Apostles themselves That which may seem to give the New Testament in respect of those that have embraced Christian Doctrine the force of Laws in the times and places of persecution is the decrees they made amongst themselves in their Synods For we read Acts 15. 28. the stile of the Councell of the Apostles the Elders and the whole Church in this manner It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burthen than these necessary things c. which is a stile that signifieth a Power to lay a burthen on them that had received their Doctrine Now to lay a burden on another seemeth the same that to oblige and therefore the Acts of that Councell were Laws to the then Christians Neverthelesse they were no more Laws than are these other Precepts Repent Be Baptized Keep the Commandements Beleeve the Gospel Come unto me Sell all that thou hast Give it to the poor and Follow me which are not Commands but Invitations and Callings of men to Christianity like that of Esay 55. 1. Ho every man that thirâ—…teth come yee to the waters come and buy wine and milke without money For first the Apostles power was no other than that of our Saviour to invite men to embrace the Kingdome of God which they themselves acknowledged for a Kingdome not present but to come and they that have no Kingdome can make no Laws And secondly if their Acts of Councell were Laws they could not without sin be disobeyed But we read
The same is also confirmed by the continuall practise even to this day in the Election of the Bishops of Rome For if the Bishop of any place had the right of choosing another to the succession of the Pastorall Office in any City at such time as he went from thence to plant the same in another place much more had he had the Right to appoint his successour in that place in which he last resided and dyed And we find not that ever any Bishop of Rome appointed his successor For they were a long time chosen by the People as we may see by the sedition raised about the Election between Damasus and Vrsicinus which Ammianus Marcellinus saith was so great that Iuventius the Praefect unable to keep the peace between them was forced to goe out of the City and that there were above an hundred men found dead upon that occasion in the Church it self And though they afterwards were chosen first by the whole Clergy of Rome and afterwards by the Cardinalls yet never any was appointed to the succession by his predecessor If therefore they pretended no right to appoint their own successors I think I may reasonably conclude they had no right to appoint the successors of other Bishops without receiving some new power which none could take from the Church to bestow on them but such as had a lawfull authority not onely to Teach but to Command the Church which none could doe but the Civill Soveraign The word Minister in the Originall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth one that voluntarily doth the businesse of another man and differeth from a Servant onely in this that Servants are obliged by their condition to what is commanded them whereas Ministers are obliged onely by their undertaking and bound therefore to no more than that they have undertaken So that both they that teach the Word of God and they that administer the secular affairs of the Church are both Ministers but they are Ministers of different Persons For the Pastors of the Church called Acts 6. 4. The Ministers of the Word are Ministers of Christ whose Word it is But the Ministery of a Deacon which is called verse 2. of the same Chapter Serving of Tables is a service done to the Church or Congregation So that neither any one man nor the whole Church could ever of their Pastor say he was their Minister but of a Deacon whether the charge he undertook were to serve tables or distribute maintenance to the Christians when they lived in each City on a common stock or upon collections as in the first times or to take a care of the House of Prayer or of the Revenue or other worldly businesse of the Church the whole Congregation might properly call him their Minister For their employment as Deacons was to serve the Congregation though upon occasion they omitted not to Preach the Gospel and maintain the Doctrine of Christ every one according to his gifts as S. Steven did and both to Preach and Baptize as Philip did For that Philip which Act. 8. 5. Preached the Gospell at Samaria and verse 38. Baptized the Eunuch was Philip the Deacon not Philip the Apostle For it is manifest verse 1. that when Philip preached in Samaria the Apostles were at Jerusalem and verse 14. when they heard that Samaria had received the Word of God sent Peter and Iohn to them by imposition of whose hands they that were Baptized verse 15. received which before by the Baptisme of Philip they had not received the Holy Ghost For it was necessary for the conferring of the Holy Ghost that their Baptisme should be administred or confirmed by a Minister of the Word not by a Minister of the Church And therefore to confirm the Baptisme of those that Philip the Deacon had Baptized the Apostles sent out of their own number from Jerusalem to Samaria Peter and John who conferred on them that before were but Baptized those graces that were signs of the Holy Spirit which at that time did accompany all true Beleevers which what they were may be understood by that which S. Marke saith chap. 16. 17. These signes follow them that beleeve in my Name they shall cast out Devills they shall speak with new tongues They shall take up Serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover This to doe was it that Philip could not give but the Apostles could and as appears by this place effectually did to every man that truly beleeved and was by a Minister of Christ himself Baptized which power either Christs Ministers in this age cannot conferre or else there are very few true Beleevers or Christ hath very few Ministérs That the first Deacons were chosen not by the Apostles but by a Congregation of the Disciples that is of Christian men of all sorts is manifest out of Acts 6. where we read that the Twelve after the number of Disciples was multiplyed called them together and having told them that it was not fit that the Apostles should leave the Word of God and serve tables said unto them verse 3. Brethren looke you out among you seven men of honest report full of the Holy Ghost and of Wisdome whom we may appoint over this businesse Here it is manifest that though the Apostles declared them elected yet the Congregation chose them which also verse the fift is more expressely said where it is written that the saying pleased the multitude and they chose seven c. Under the Old Testament the Tribe of Levi were onely capable of the Priesthood and other inferiour Offices of the Church The land was divided amongst the other Tribes Levi excepted which by the subdivision of the Tribe of Joseph into Ephraim and Manasses were still twelve To the Tribe of Levi were assigned certain Cities for their habitation with the suburbs for their cattell but for their portion they were to have the tenth of the fruits of the land of their Brethren Again the Priests for their maintenance had the tenth of that tenth together with part of the oblations and sacrifices For God had said to Aaron Numb 18. 20. Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land neither shalt thou have any part amongst them I am thy part and thine inheritance amongst the Children of Israel For God being then King and having constituted the Tribe of Levi to be his Publique Ministers he allowed them for their maintenance the Publique revenue that is to say the part that God had reserved to himself which were Tythes and Offerings and that is it which is meant where God saith I am thine inheritance And therefore to the Levites might not unfitly be attributed the name of Clergy from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth Lot or Inheritance not that they were heirs of the Kingdome of God more than other but that Gods inheritance was their maintenance Now seeing in this time
first that of Luke 22. 31. Simon Simon Satan hath desired you that hee may sist you as wheat but I have prayed for thee that thy faith faile not and when thou art converted strengthen thy thy Brethren This according to Bellarmines exposition is that Christ gave here to Simon Peter two priviledges one that neither his Faith should fail nor the Faith of any of his successors the other that neither he nor any of his successors should ever define any point concerning Faith or Manners erroneously or contrary to the definition of a former Pope Which is a strange and very much strained interpretation But he that with attention readeth that chapter shall find there is no place in the whole Scripture that maketh more against the Popes Authority than this very place The Priests and Scribes seeking to kill our Saviour at the Passeover and Judas possessed with a resolution to betray him and the day of killing the Passeover being come our Saviour celebrated the same with his Apostles which he said till the Kingdome of God was come hee would doe no more and withall told them that one of them was to betray him Hereupon they questioned which of them it should be and withall seeing the next Passeover their Master would celebrate should be when he was King entred into a contention who should then be the greatest man Our Saviour therefore told them that the Kings of the Nations had Dominion over their Subjects and are called by a name in Hebrew that signifies Bountifull but I cannot be so to you you must endeavour to serve one another I ordain you a Kingdome but it is such as my Father hath ordained mee a Kingdome that I am now to purchase with my blood and not to possesse till my second coming then yee shall eat and drink at my Table and sit on Thrones judging the twelve Tribes of Israel And then addressing himself to St. Peter he saith Simon Simon Satan seeks by suggesting a present domination to weaken your faith of the future but I have prayed for thee that thy faith shall not fail Thou therefore Note this being converted and understanding my Kingdome as of another world confirm the same faith in thy Brethren To which S. Peter answered as one that no more expected any authority in this world Lord I am ready to goe with thee not onely to Prison but to Death Whereby it is manifest S. Peter had not onely no jurisdiction given him in this world but a charge to teach all the other Apostles that they also should have none And for the Infallibility of St. Peters sentence definitive in matter of Faith there is no more to be attributed to it out of this Text than that Peter should continue in the beleef of this point namely that Christ should come again and possesse the Kingdome at the day of Judgement which was not given by this Text to all his Successors for wee see they claime it in the World that now is The second place is that of Matth. 16. Thou art Peter and upon this rocke I will build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it By which as I have already shewn in this chapter is proved no more than that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the confession of Peter which gave occasion to that speech namely this that Iesus is Christ the Sonne of God The third Text is Iohn 21. ver 16 17. Feed my sheep which contains no more but a Commission of Teaching And if we grant the rest of the Apostles to be contained in that name of Sheep then it is the supreme Power of Teaching but it was onely for the time that there were no Christian Soveraigns already possessed of that Supremacy But I have already proved that Christian Soveraignes are in their owne Dominions the supreme Pastors and instituted thereto by vertue of their being Baptized though without other Imposition of Hands For such Imposition being a Ceremony of designing the person is needlesse when hee is already designed to the Power of Teaching what Doctrine he will by his institution to an Absolute Power over his Subjects For as I have proved before Soveraigns are supreme Teachers in generall by their Office and therefore oblige themselves by their Baptisme to teach the Doctrine of Christ And when they suffer others to teach their people they doe it at the perill of their own souls for it is at the hands of the Heads of Families that God will require the account of the instruction of his Children and Servants It is of Abraham himself not of a hireling that God saith Gen. 18. 19. I know him that he will command his Children and his houshold after him that they keep the way of the Lord and do justice and judgement The fourth place is that of Exod. 28. 30. Thou shalt put in the Breastplate of Iudgment the Vrim and the Thummin which hee saith is interpreted by the Septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Evidence and Truth And thence concludeth God had given Evidence and Truth which is almost Infallibility to the High Priest But be it Evidence and Truth it selfe that was given or be it but Admonition to the Priest to endeavour to inform himself cleerly and give judgment uprightly yet in that it was given to the High Priest it was given to the Civill Soveraign For such next under God was the High Priest in the the Common-wealth of Israel and is an argument for Evidence and Truth that is for the Ecclesiasticall Supremacy of Civill Soveraigns over their own Subjects against the pretended Power of the Pope These are all the Texts hee bringeth for the Infallibility of the Judgement of the Pope in point of Faith For the Infallibility of his Judgment concerning Manners hee bringeth one Text which is that of Iohn 16. 13. When the Spirit of truth is come hee will lead you into all truth where saith he by all truth is meant at least all truth necessary to salvation But with this mitigation he attributeth no more Infallibility to the Pope than to any man that professeth Christianity and is not to be damned For if any man 〈◊〉 in any point wherein not to erre is necessary to Salvation it is impossible he should be saved for that onely is necessary to Salvation without which to be saved is impossible What points these are I shall declare out of the Scripture in the Chapter following In this place I say no more but that though it were granted the Pope could not possibly teach any error at all yet doth not this entitle him to any Jurisdiction in the Dominions of another Prince unlesse we shall also say a man is obliged in conscience to set on work upon all occasions the best workman even then also when he hath formerly promised his work to another Besides the Text he argueth from Reason thus If the Pope could erre in necessaries then Christ hath not sufficiently provided
have their Jurisdiction from the Soveraigns of the place wherein they exercise the same And as for that cause they have not their Authority de Iure Divino so neither hath the Pope his de Iure Divino except onely where hee is also the Civill Soveraign His fift argument is this If Bishops have their Iurisdiction immediately from God the Pope could not take it from them for he can doe nothing contrary to Gods ordination And this consequence is good and well proved But saith he the Pope can do this and has done it This also is granted so he doe it in his own Dominions or in the Dominions of any other Prince that hath given him that Power but not universally in Right of the Popedome For that power belongeth to every Christian Soveraign within the bounds of his owne Empire and is inseparable from the Soveraignty Before the People of Israel had by the commandment of God to Samuel set over themselves a King after the manner of other Nations the High Priest had the Civill Government and none but he could make nor depose an inferiour Priest But that Power was afterwards in the King as may be proved by this same argument of Bellarmine For if the Priest be he the High Priest or any other had his Jurisdiction immediately from God then the King could not take it from him for he could doe nothing contrary to Gods ordinance But it is certain that King Solomon 1 Kings 2. 26. deprived Abiathar the High Priest of his Office and placed Zadok verse 35. in his room Kings therefore may in the like manner Ordaine and Deprive Bishops as they shall thinke fit for the well governing of their Subjects His sixth argument is this If Bishops have their Jurisdiction de Iure Divino that is immediately from God they that maintaine it should bring some Word of God to prove it But they can bring none The argument is good I have therefore nothing to say against it But it is an argument no lesse good to prove the Pope himself to have no Jurisdiction in the Dominion of any other Prince Lastly hee bringeth for argument the testimony of two Popes Innocent and Leo and I doubt not but hee might have alledged with as good reason the testimonies of all the Popes almost since S. Peter For considering the love of Power naturally implanted in mankind whosoever were made Pope he would be tempted to uphold the same opinion Neverthelesse they should therein but doe as Innocent and Leo did bear witnesse of themselves and therefore their witnesse should not be good In the fift Book he hath four Conclusions The first is That the Pope is not Lord of all the world The second That the Pope is not Lord of all the Christian world The third That the Pope without his owne Territory has not any Temporall Jurisdiction DIRECTLY These three Conclusions are easily granted The fourth is That the Pope has in the Dominions of other Princes the Supreme Temporall Power INDIRECTLY which is denyed unlesse hee mean by Indirectly that he has gotten it by Indirect means then is that also granted But I understand that when he saith he hath it Indirectly he means that such Temporall Jurisdiction belongeth to him of Right but that this Right is but a Consequence of his Pastorall Authority the which he could not exercise unlesse he have the other with it And therefore to the Pastorall Power which he calls Spirituall the Supreme Power Civill is necessarily annexed and that thereby hee hath a Right to change Kingdomes giving them to one and taking them from another when he shall think it conduces to the Salvation of Souls Before I come to consider the Arguments by which hee would prove this Doctrine it will not bee amisse to lay open the Consequences of it that Princes and States that have the Civill Soveraignty in their severall Common-wealths may bethink themselves whether it bee convenient for them and conducing to the good of their Subjects of whom they are to give an account at the day of Judgment to admit the same When it is said the Pope hath not in the Territories of other States the Supreme Civill Power Directly we are to understand he doth not challenge it as other Civill Soveraigns doe from the originall submission thereto of those that are to be governed For it is evident and has already been sufficiently in this Treatise demonstrated that the Right of all Soveraigns is derived originally from the consent of every one of those that are to bee governed whether they that choose him doe it for their common defence against an Enemy as when they agree amongst themselves to appoint a Man or an Assembly of men to protect them or whether they doe it to save their lives by submission to a conquering Enemy The Pope therefore when he disclaimeth the Supreme Civill Power over other States Directly denyeth no more but that his Right cometh to him by that way He ceaseth not for all that to claime it another way and that is without the consent of them that are to be governed by a Right given him by God which hee calleth indirectly in his Assumption to the Papacy But by what way soever he pretend the Power is the same and he may if it bee granted to be his Right depose Princes and States as often as it is for the Salvation of Soules that is as often as he will for he claimeth also the Sole Power to Judge whether it be to the Salvation of mens Souls or not And this is the Doctrine not onely that Bellarmine here and many other Doctors teach in their Sermons and Books but also that some Councells have decreed and the Popes have accordingly when the occasion hath served them put in practise For the fourth Councell of Lateran held under Pope Innocent the third in the third Chap. De Haereticis hath this Canon If a King at the Popes admonition doe not purge his Kingdome of Haeretiques and being Excommunicate for the same make not satisfaction within a yeer his Subjects are absolved of their Obedience And the practise hereof hath been seen on divers occasions as in the Deposing of Chilperique King of France in the Translation of the Roman Empire to Charlemaine in the Oppression of Iohn King of England in Transferring the Kingdome of Navarre and of late years in the League against Henry the third of France and in many more occâ—…rrences I think there be few Princes that consider not this as Injust and Inconvenient but I wish they would all resolve to be Kings or Subjects Men cannot serve two Masters They ought therefore to ease them either by holding the Reins of Government wholly in their own hands or by wholly delivering them into the hands of the Pope that such men as are willing to be obedient may be protected in their obedience For this distinction of Temporall and Spirituall Power is but words Power is as really divided and as
we or an Angell from Heaven preach any other Gospell unto you than that wee have preached unto you let him bee accursed But the Gospell which Paul and the other Apostles preached was onely this Article that Jesus is the Christ Therefore for the Beleef of this Article we are to reject the Authority of an Angell from heaven much more of any mortall man if he teach the contrary This is therefore the Fundamentall Article of Christian Faith A third place is 1 Joh. 4. 1. Beloved beleâ—…ve not every spirit Hereby yee shall know the Spirit of God every spirit that confesseth that Iesus Christ is come in the flâ—…sh is of God By which it is evident that this Article is the measure and rule by which to estimate and examine all other Articles and is therefore onely Fundamentall A fourth is Matt. 16. 18. where after St. Peter had professed this Article saying to our Saviour Thou art Christ the Son of the living God Our Saviour answered Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church from whence I inferre that this Article is that on which all other Doctrines of the Church are built as on their Foundation A fift is 1 Cor. 3. ver 11 12 c. Other Foundation can no man lay than that which is laid Jesus is the Christ. Now if any man build upon this Foundation Gold Silver pretious Stones Wood Hay Stubble Every mans work shall be made manifest For the Day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try every mans work of what sort it is If any mans work abide which he hath built thereupon he shall receive a reward If any mans work shall bee burnt he shall suffer losse but he himself shall be saved yet so as by fire Which words being partly plain and easie to understand and partly allegoricall and difficult out of that which is plain may be inferred that Pastors that teach this Foundation that Jesus is the Christ though they draw from it false consequences which all men are sometimes subject to they may neverthelesse bee saved much more that they may bee saved who being no Pastors but Hearers beleeve that which is by their lawfull Pastors taught them Therefore the beleef of this Article is sufficient and by consequence there is no other Article of Faith Necessarily required to Salvation Now for the part which is Allegoricall as That the fire shall try every mans work and that They shall be saved but so as by fire or through fire for the originall is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it maketh nothing against this conclusion which I have drawn from the other words that are plain Neverthelesse because upon this place there hath been an argument taken to prove the fire of Purgatory I will also here offer you my conjecture concerning the meaning of this triall of Doctrines and saving of men as by Fire The Apostle here seemeth to allude to the words of the Prophet Zachary Ch. 13. 8 9. who speaking of the Restauration of the Kingdome of God saith thus Two parts therein shall be cut off and die but the third shall be left therein And I will bring the third part through the Fire and will refine them as Silver is refined and will try them as Gold is tryed they shall call on the name of the Lord and I will hear them The day of Judgment is the day of the Restauration of the Kingdome of God and at that day it is that St. Peter tells us * shall be the Conflagration of the world wherein the wicked shall perish but the remnant which God will save shall passe through that Fire unhurt and be therein as Silver and Gold are refined by the fire from their drosse tryed and refined from their Idolatry and be made to call upon the name of the true God Alluding whereto St. Paul here saith That the Day that is the Day of Judgment the Great Day of our Saviours comming to restore the Kingdome of God in Israel shall try every mans doctrine by Judging which are Gold Silver Pretious Stones Wood Hay Stubble And then they that have built false Consequences on the true Foundation shall see their Doctrines condemned neverthelesse they themselves shall be saved and passe unhurt through this universall Fire and live eternally to call upon the name of the true and onely God In which sense there is nothing that accordeth not with the rest of Holy Scripture or any glimpse of the fire of Purgatory But a man may here aske whether it bee not as necessary to Salvation to beleeve that God is Omnipotent Creator of the world that Jesus Christ is risen and that all men else shall rise again from the dead at the last day as to beleeve that Jesus is the Christ. To which I answer they are and so are many more Articles but they are such as are contained in this one and may be deduced from it with more or lesse difficulty For who is there that does not see that they who beleeve Jesus to be the Son of the God of Israel and that the Israelites had for God the Omnipotent Creator of all things doe therein also beleeve that God is the Omnipotent Creator of all things Or how can a man beleeve that Jesus is the King that shall reign eternally unlesse hee beleeve him also risen again from the dead For a dead man cannot exercise the Office of a King In summe he that holdeth this Foundation Jesus is the Christ holdeth Expressely all that hee seeth rightly deduced from it and Implicitely all that is consequent thereunto though he have not skill enough to discern the consequence And therefore it holdeth still good that the beleef of this one Article is sufficient faith to obtaine remission of sinnes to the Penitent and consequently to bring them into the Kingdome of Heaven Now that I have shewn that all the Obedience required to Salvation consisteth in the will to obey the Law of God that is to say in Repentance and all the Faith required to the same is comprehended in the beleef of this Article Jesus is the Christ I will further alledge those places of the Gospell that prove that all that is Necessary to Salvation is contained in both these joined together The men to whom St. Peter preached on the day of Pentecost next after the Ascension of our Saviour asked him and the rest of the Apostles saying Act. 2. 37. Men and Brethren what shall we doe To whom St. Peter answered in the next verse Repent and be Baptized every one of you for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost Therefore Repentance and Baptisme that is beleeving that Jesus is the Christ is all that is Necessary to Salvation Again our Saviour being asked by a certain Ruler Luke 18. 18. What shall I doe to inherite eternall life Answered verse 20. Thou knowest the Commandements Doe not commit
Adultery Doe not Kill Doe not Steal Doe not bear false witnesse Honor thy Father and thy Mother which when he said he had observed our Saviour added Sell all thou hast give it to the Poor and come and follow me which was as much as to say Relye on me that am the King Therefore to fulfill the Law and to beleeve that Jesus is the King is all that is required to bring a man to eternall life Thirdly St. Paul saith Rom. 1. 17. The Just shall live by Faith not every one but the Just therefore Faith and Justice that is the will to be Just or Repentance are all that is Necessary to life eternall And Mark 1. 15. our Saviour preached saying The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand Repent and Beleeve the Evangile that is the Good news that the Christ was come Therefore to Repent and to Beleeve that Jesus is the Christ is all that is required to Salvation Seeing then it is Necessary that Faith and Obedience implyed in the word Repentance do both concurre to our Salvation the question by which of the two we are Justified is impertinently disputed Neverthelesse it will not be impertinent to make manifest in what manner each of them contributes thereunto and in what sense it is said that we are to be Justified by the one and by the other And first if by Righteousnesse be understood the Justice of the Works themselves there is no man that can be saved for there is none that hath not transgressed the Law of God And therefore when wee are said to be Justified by Works it is to be understood of the Will which God doth alwaies accept for the Work it selfe as well in good as in evill men And in this sense onely it is that a man is callod Iust or Vnjust and that his Justice Justifies him that is gives him the title in Gods acceptation of Just and renders him capable of living by his Faith which before he was not So that Justice Justifies in that sense in which to Justifie is the same that to Denominate a man Iust and not in the signification of discharging the Law whereby the punishment of his sins should be unjust But a man is then also said to be Justified when his Plea though in it selfe unsufficient is accepted as when we Plead our Will our Endeavour to fulfill the Law and Repent us of our failings and God accepteth it for the Performance it selfe And because God accepteth not the Will for the Deed but onely in the Faithfull it is therefore Faith that makes good our Plea and in this sense it is that Faith onely Justifies So that Faith and Obedience are both Necessary to Salvation yet in severall senses each of them is said to Justifie Having thus shewn what is Necessary to Salvation it is not hard to reconcile our Obedience to God with our Obedience to the Civill Soveraign who is either Christian or Infidel If he bee a Christian he alloweth the beleefe of this Article that Iesus is the Christ and of all the Articles that are contained in or are by evident consequence deduced from it which is all the Faith Necessary to Salvation And because he is a Soveraign he requireth Obedience to all his owne that is to all the Civill Laws in which also are contained all the Laws of Nature that is all the Laws of God for besides the Laws of Nature and the Laws of the Church which are part of the Civill Law for the Church that can make Laws is the Common-wealth there bee no other Laws Divine Whosoever therefore obeyeth his Christian Soveraign is not thereby hindred neither from beleeving nor from obeying God But suppose that a Christian King should from this Foundation Iesus is the Christ draw some false consequences that is to say make some superstructions of Hay or Stubble and command the teaching of the same yet seeing St. Paul says he shal be saved much more shall he be saved that teacheth them by his command and much more yet he that teaches not but onely beleeves his lawfull Teacher And in case a Subject be forbidden by the Civill Soveraign to professe some of those his opinions upon what just ground can he disobey Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence but who shall Judge Shall a private man Judge when the question is of his own obedience or shall any man Judg but he that is appointed thereto by the Church that is by the Civill Soveraign that representeth it or if the Pope or an Apostle Judge may he not erre in deducing of a consequence did not one of the two St. Peter or St. Paul erre in a superstructure when St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his face There can therefore be no contradiction between the Laws of God and the Laws of a Christian Common-wealth And when the Civill Soveraign is an Infidel every one of his own Subjects that resisteth him sinneth against the Laws of God for such as are the Laws of Nature and rejecteth the counsell of the Apostles that admonisheth all Christians to obey their Princes and all Children and Servants to obey their Parents and Masters in all things And for their Faith it is internall and invisible They have the licence that Naaman had and need not put themselves into danger for it But if they do they ought to expect their reward in Heaven and not complain of their Lawfull Soveraign much lesse make warre upon him For he that is not glad of any just occasion of Martyrdome has not the faith he professeth but pretends it onely to set some colour upon his own contumacy But what Infidel King is so unreasonable as knowing he has a Subject that waiteth for the second comming of Christ after the present world shall bee burnt and intendeth then to obey him which is the intent of beleeving that Iesus is the Christ and in the mean time thinketh himself bound to obey the Laws of that Infidel King which all Christians are obliged in conscience to doe to put to death or to persecute such a Subject And thus much shall suffice concerning the Kingdome of God and Policy Ecclesiasticall Wherein I pretend not to advance any Position of my own but onely to shew what are the Consequences that seem to me deducible from the Principles of Christian Politiques which are the holy Scriptures in confirmation of the Power of Civill Soveraigns and the Duty of their Subjects And in the allegation of Scripture I have endeavoured to avoid such texts as are of obscure or controverted Interpretation and to alledge none but in such sense as is most plain and agreeable to the harmony and scope of the whole Bible which was written for the re-establishment of the Kingdome of God in Christ. For it is not the bare Words but the Scope of the writer that giveth the true light by which any writing is to bee interpreted and they that insist upon
also the Power of Explaining them when there is need And are not the Scriptures in all places where they are Law made Law by the Authority of the Common-wealth and consequently a part of the Civill Law Of the same kind it is also when any but the Soveraign restraineth in any man that power which the Common-wealth hath not restrained as they do that impropriate the Preaching of the Gospell to one certain Order of men where the Laws have left it free If the State give me leave to preach or teach that is if it forbid me not no man can forbid me If I find my selfe amongst the Idolaters of America shall I that am a Christian though not in Orders think it a sin to preach Jesus Christ till I have received Orders from Rome or when I have preached shall not I answer their doubts and expound the Scriptures to them that is shall I not Teach But for this may some say as also for administring to them the Sacraments the necessity shall be esteemed for a sufficient Mission which is true But this is true also that for whatsoever a dispensation is due for the necessity for the same there needs no dispensation when there is no Law that forbids it Therefore to deny these Functions to those to whom the Civill Soveraigne hath not denyed them is a taking away of a lawfull Liberty which is contrary to the Doctrine of Civill Government More examples of Vain Philosophy brought into Religion by the Doctors of Schoole-Divinity might be produced but other men may if they please observe them of themselves I shall onely adde this that the Writings of Schoole-Divines are nothing else for the most part but insignificant Traines of strange and barbarous words or words otherwise used then in the common use of the Latine tongue such as would pose Cicero and Varro and all the Grammarians of ancient Rome Which if any man would see proved let him as I have said once before see whether he can translate any Schoole-Divine into any of the Modern tongues as French English or any other copious language for that which cannot in most of these be made Intelligible is not Intelligible in the Latine Which Insignificancy of language though I cannot note it for false Philosophy yet it hath a quality not onely to hide the Truth but also to make men think they have it and desist from further search Lastly for the Errors brought in from false or uncertain History what is all the Legend of fictitious Miracles in the lives of the Saints and all the Histories of Apparitions and Ghosts alledged by the Doctors of the Romane Church to make good their Doctrines of Hell and Purgatory the power of Exorcisme and other Doctrines which have no warrant neither in Reason nor Scripture as also all those Traditions which they call the unwritten Word of God but old Wives Fables Whereof though they find dispersed somewhat in the Writings of the ancient Fathers yet those Fathers were men that might too easily beleeve false reports and the producing of their opinions for testimony of the truth of what they beleeved hath no other force with them that according to the Counsell of St. Iohn 1 Epist. chap. 4. verse 1. examine Spirits than in all things that concern the power of the Romane Church the abuse whereof either they suspected not or had benefit by it to discredit their testimony in respect of too rash beleef of reports which the most sincere men without great knowledge of naturall causes such as the Fathers were are commonly the most subject to For naturally the best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes Gregory the Pope and S. Bernard have somewhat of Apparitions of Ghosts that said they were in Purgatory and so has our Beda but no where I beleeve but by report from others But if they or any other relate any such stories of their own knowledge they shall not thereby confirm the more such vain reports but discover their own Infirmity or Fraud With the Introduction of False we may joyn also the suppression of True Philosophy by such men as neither by lawfull authority nor sufficient study are competent Judges of the truth Our own Navigations make manifest and all men learned in humane Sciences now acknowledge there are Antipodes And every day it appeareth more and more that Years and Dayes are determined by Motions of the Earth Neverthelesse men that have in their Writings but supposed such Doctrine as an occasion to lay open the reasons for and against it have been punished for it by Authority Ecclesiasticall But what reason is there for it Is it becaâ—…se such opinions are contrary to true Religion that cannot be if they be true Let therefore the truth be first examined by competent Judges or confuted by them that pretend to know the contrary Is it because they be contrary to the Religion established Let them be silenced by the Laws of those to whom the Teachers of them are subject that is by the Laws Civill For disobedience may lawfully be punished in them that against the Laws teach even true Philosophy Is it because they tend to disorder in Government as countenancing Rebellion or Sedition then let them be silenced and the Teachers punished by vertue of his Power to whom the care of the Publique quiet is committed which is the Authority Civill For whatsoever Power Ecclesiastiques take upon themselves in any place where they are subject to the State in their own Right though they call it Gods Right is but Usurpation CHAP. XLVII Of the BENEFIT that proceedeth from such Darknesse and to whom it accreweth CIcero maketh honorable mention of one of the Cassâ—… a severe Judge amongst the Romans for a custome he had in Criminall causes when the testimony of the witnesses was not sufficient to ask the Accusers Cuibono that is to say what Profit Honor or other Contentment the accused obtained or expected by the Fact For amongst Praesumptions there is none that so evidently declareth the Author as doth the BENEFIT of the Action By the same rule I intend in this place to examine who they may be that have possessed the People so long in this part of Christendome with these Doctrines contrary to the Peaceable Societies of Mankind And first to this Error that the present Church now Militant on Earth is the Kingdome of God that is the Kingdome of Glory or the Land of Promise not the Kingdome of Grace which is but a Promise of the Land are annexed these worldly Benefits First that the Pastors and Teachers of the Church are entitled thereby as Gods Publique Ministers to a Right of Governing the Church and consequently because the Church and Common-wealth are the same Persons to be Rectors and Governours of the Common-wealth By this title it is that the Pope prevailed with the subjects of all Christian Princes to beleeve that to disobey him was to disobey Christ himselfe