sure you will not say that the meanest Laick has any power over him whom he may thus convince at least not coherently to your own principles who in opposition to our Lay-chancellours make Jurisdiction inseparable from Orders So also if the power of Excommunication be no more than declaring a person unfit for the communion of the congregation as being impenitent and Absolution be a declaration of his fitness for such communion as a penitent then every prosecutor of a criminal every witness produced against him every prudent skilful Canonist every Laick that is sufficiently informed of the sense of the Law and matter of fact may as well excommunicate as the Bishop or the Presbytery For every such skilful person may know the fitness or unfitness of such a person for communion and knowing it may declare his knowledge with the reasons of it and upon such declaration the people may if they pleafe do as he would have them either communicate with or separate from such a person For indeed no declaration of it self formally and precisely understood is obligatory but as it is a promulgation of that which antecedently has a just obligative power In actu primo yet is not in actu secundo obligatory quoad nos till we know it As though the King and Parliament have a power of making Laws and therefore what has passed all their Votes in the first moment when it has done so is immediately a Law yet it is not in actu secundo obligatory on the Subject so as that its violation by him does incur the annexed penalty till it be legally promulged Yet so it is on the contray that this legal promulgation it self that is such a promulgation as is performed by the person authorized by Law with all the requisite circumstances cannot make any thing really obligatory that has not formerly been decreed by the Legislative Power Unless therefore there be in the Church a power antecedent to such declaration the declaration can make none seeing every one may declare his own sense as well as the Governour and declaration does onely make that obligatory quoad nos which was so in se antecedently I did not before charge you with any of those pernicious Doctrines to Church Authority taxed in my Preface and am sorry now you give me so just occasion to do it It may be I may misunderstand you and shall be very glad to acknowledge my mistake when you shall call it one AND I beseech you who have so publickly professed your self a Friend to publick peace and an Enemy to Church-divisions to consider whether those disparaging Doctrines concerning the power of the Church be not Seminaries of infinite and eternal Schisms For if the Church have no other power but persuasive and declarative then he who either actually persuaded of the equity of her particular impositions or at least pretends it may freely remonstrate against them and refuse obedience to them and cannot be restrained frm seditious behaviour by Excommunication unless at least the greater part of Communicants be satisfied and profess themselves to be so that it is their duty not in obedience to their Superiours but on account of the particular reasonableness of the thing to withdraw themselves from his communion And even then it self if he can persuade a few to his Party he may upon these principles without any scruple of conscience erect a new communion for himself For indeed what can hinder him when government which is the principle of unity in all Societies is thus deprived of all other awe of conscience to oblige him to obedience distinct from his particular satisfaction of the reasonableness of the things or of any coercive means of his restraint be his cause never so bad and his dissatisfaction never so onely pretended And when the unity of the Catholick Church is thus made to depend on so hazardous and rarely-contingent a condition as the persuasion of its many thousand members of infinite interests and capacities of the reasonableness of every particular indifferent or probable Constitution who can ever secure it for so long a time as the Government of the Church was designed for by him who first did constitute it I know for prevention of these inconveniences you would have Governours cautious in determining any thing but what is clear and necessary And for my part I wish it so too that for matters of belief it not being in Subjects minds to believe what they please they would determine nothing but what were very evident and even for matters indifferent that they would neither determine more of them than were needful nor such of them as were not convenient in the circumstances and suitable to the dispositions of the age of their determination nor be too tenacious in maintaining them when their inconveniences should be found greater than their advantage Though I confess withall that it were in prudence much safer to make any such change by their own free Election than to seem necessitated to it by mutinous and seditious Remonstrances of their Subjects such a compliance being of greater consequential prejudice to government and consequently to Ecclesiastical Unity than a maintainance of a thing indifferent though inconvenient But withall you know that Unanimity even in things indifferent much more in matters of Faith is in general and indefinitely necessary though not particularly determined in the Scripture that this unanimous observance of things of such a nature is not morally possible by the particular conviction of every Subject of their fitness that therefore there is no security for their unanimous observance but that of authority and no authority so proper as that which is Ecclesiastical that when it is so imposed it is an instance of obedience to the authority imposing that being so whatever it may be in its own nature it cannot still remain indifferent as to its use seeing it is not indifferent whether Subjects ought to be obedient to their lawful Sovereigns And therefore methinks it would become you in healing Church-divisions to take a care of preserving as well the Prerogatives of Governours as the Christian Liberty of Subjects seeing extremes on both sides are alike prejudicial to Ecclesiastical Unity Indeed I confess many of our first Reformers not to have been so cautions herein as the Interest of the Church would have required who feeling themselves oppressed by a Tyrannical Ecclesiastical Power and being extremely exasperated by their violent and rigorous proceedings were almost onely sollicitous about Negatives never satisfying themselves with any reasonable retrenchments of such exorbitancies onely shewing how far Ecclesiastical Power might not presume but not how far it might proceed And they were then the more excusable for not proceeding to such positives because the ends of such Ecclesiastical Power the preserrvation of unity both in faith and practice were then more easily attainable without the Interposition of the exercise of such a power For their first zeal against the common Adversary will
which are taught by the Doctrines of Christianity And as to the kinds of Crimes For as for the Law of Nature the punishment of Offences against that will as properly belong to the Magistrate as the Bishop and that not onely as to the Second Table which does professedly concern Crimes against Secular Conversation but also the First as far as it relates to Natural Religion the Interest of the State being so nearly involved in that of Religion especially as far as it is natural as that all Obligation of conscience is derived from thence which is incomparably a better Preservative of the Princes Rights than that of external force As for the positive Laws of the State they are far more numerous than those of Christianity according to those who make the Scripture an adequate Rule of such Positives For how extremely do these fall short of those Volumes of Codes and Pandects Charters and Statutes Civil and Municipal of all the distinct subordinat Societies to which every particular person is related by multiplication whereof his duties and possible offences must be proportionably multiplied That I may not now mention all the extemporary provisional commands which are acknowledged obligatory even to the sinfulness of such disobediences by virtue of the general Subjection due to ordinary and extraordinary Superiours But yet the positive impositions of the Scriptures themselves which may be conceived ordinarily and eternally obligatory to sin are extremely short of the Voluminousness of the Canonical Writers themselves For deduct first all those passages that are purely historical for as for the obligation of Scripture-precedent which is so much insisted on by some themselves dare not maintain it in the utmost latitude Nor have they yet established such Notes whereby we might discern when we are concerned in them and when we are not and when we are when onely its imitation is commendable and when its omission is directly sinful what is obligatory in all circumstances and what onely in some particular ones what are all the circumstances requisite for such obligation and how we may know when they concurr particularly in our present case when their obligation arises from the authority and when onely from the prudence of their Author when they oblige as Laws and when onely as Rules when upon account of the authority of the person and when onely of the reason of the thing For when this obligation is derived from the reason of the thing as I might have proved it generally to be either as to the establishment of the Rule or at least as to its application to the particular case to be ruled by it then it cannot be proved without recourse to other Laws of Nature or Prudence or positive Constitutions so that such precedents will not encrease the number of Scripture-obligations Deduct also all promises and threats all exhortations and dehortations which are not themselves precepts but suppose the proof of the precepts which they concern by other mediums And even of that small part of the Scripture which after these deductions will still remain properly preceptive which for the Old Testament does according to the computation of the Rabbins who are most minutely critical in such punctilio's amount to no more than 643 including both affirmatives and negatives If we still further consider how many of them are onely positive enforcements of natural Laws and so reducible to the forementioned consideration how many of them that are positive concern the Jews not as a Church but as a Commonwealth how all of them that concern them as a Church are now evacuated by that Evangelical Liberty which has abrogated the Mosaick Authority from which they derived their Sanction how even of the New Testament prescriptions many are onely provisional and onely grounded on temporary reasons and those such as are not suitable to our present times and places how many are confessedly antiquated and how hard it is to distinguish Apostolical Connivanees from Approbations their Approbations from Constitutions their Constitutions as of ordinary Governours and their Traditions as extraordinarily sent and impowered by our Saviour for the eternal and unalterable obligation of the Catholick Church When all these things I say are considered and allowed for the positive Constitutions of the Scripture which may oblige us antecedently to the Churches Imposition which the persons I am speaking of do not value and that to sin will be extremely short of the number of Secular Laws § V AND though we should to increase the number add the Ecclesiastical Laws to those of the Scriptures yet neither so would they exceed the Secular For to make this comparison with Justice we should 1. Compare onely such Ecclesiastical Laws as do not derive their force from any civil Sanctions For they that do must needs suppose those civil Sanctions at least as numerous as themselves and therefore cannot be presumed to over-number them And this consideration will be extended not onely to such Instances wherein Ecclesiastical Persons exercise a Power confessedly dependent on the Concessions of Princes as in Marriages and Wills and Testaments and the certain proportion of the Ecclesiastical maintainance c. but also to those spiritual crimes more immediately relating to their cognizance as established under Secular Penalties which will de jure include all affairs of that nature in Christian Commonwealths where the Prince is acknowledged to be custos utriusque juris and de facto does include the Ecclesiastical Constitutions of our Kingdoms where the Clergie are not onely by Law but by promise in King Henry the Eighth his time as far as that promise can oblige their Successors obliged to make no Laws without the Secular permission Seeing therefore that with us at least there are no Ecclesiastical Laws but what are seconded by the Secular but many Secular not seconded by Ecclesiastical it must needs follow that Secular Laws and consequently Crimes must be more numerous than such as are Ecclesiastical But 2. Abate even out of the Jus Pontificium which has swelled to the greatest Voluminousness in this kind not onely such things as are undertaken by Ecclesiastical persons by the favour of Princes but such as are usurped against their express consent and wherein the Romish Clergie who have so exceeded in this kind cannot de jure challenge any Legislative power and the number of such Laws will yet extremely decrease And 3. All such Laws as are grounded on Ecclesiastical Usurpation such as are all those which abridge the power of ordinary Bishops and ascribe all to the omnipotency of the Roman See which seems to be the principal scandal that first alienated Spalato from them I need not instance particulars of this kind whose Titles abound with them as those of reserved Cases of Exemptions of Appeals from without the Limits of the Roman Patriarchate c. And 4. All such Laws as are grounded on false Doctrines as those against the use of the Cup in Laical Communion against reading the
rather to be Christians and communicate than to lie in Gaol and have all our Estates confiscate One would think that you were desirous to find Objections against us when thus almost at the same time you blame us for having that which immediately before you blamed us for wanting For the difference is not as one would think from the most candid interpretation of your words That you would have such guilty persons forced to confer with you but not to profess themselves Christians and communicate without your leave for you afterwards profess simply that you would have no force at all Besides what force is it that you mean is it that exteriour one of laws and corporal penalties this your words seem plainly to imply This you know does not belong to the Church but the civil Magistrates power circa sacra who is therefore to be blamed for it and not the Church if it be a crime and some body must needs bear the blame Or are they the spiritual coercions of the Church I know none of that kind but Excommunication which is of no force with those who do not value the advantage of communion and they who do need not to be forced to confer with their Minister Besides that your self know and have confessed that the power of Suspension of unworthy persons from the Sacrament is allowed to the Parish Minister even in our Church so that even in that case he has his remedy in his own hand as far as it can be proved expedient that he should under a Monarchical Government But methinks your description of a Prelatick Christian is very harsh and though for my part I am resolved to take nothing ill because I verily believe not onely by this Letter but your other publick writings that the heat of your style and the extraordinary expedition you make use of not allowing your self time for second thoughts do transport you to such expressions as your serious reflections would not approve yet would to other less favourable Judges of your good meaning rather tend to exasperate than cure those divisions for which you are justly so much concerned And besides your own acknowledgment of many good Prelatick Christians on other occasions you cannot be ignorant that many of them have been Christians of that which you call the old profession that is have been Christians and held communion with the Church though they have gone to prison and death for it not onely in Queen Maries days but even in your own memory in England and Ireland when their being so has brought sufferings on them not rescued them from them So that I do not understand why you should stigmatize them with the name of Prelatical INDEED if you could shew that it was rather the extraordinary good influences of God and their own good inclinations that made them voluntarily good against their worldly interests notwithstanding their malignant principles which of themselves would have made them otherwise I confess your commendable inclination to speak of things as they are might have excused the rigour of such expressions But 1. You cannot but know that these exterior compulsions have not been proper to Prelatists but common to all those that have owned such a thing as discipline Presbyterians as well as Papists so that there is no reason to appropriate to such Christians as are made so by coercive discipline the invidious name of Prelatical And 2. You have not and I believe you cannot prove that such external force must needs of it self make Prelatists dissemblers 1. Because all that are of themselves good will not need such force this being onely a secondary reserve for reducing such as are desperate as to that power which alone you allow the Church that is of persuasion none being this way compelled but they who cannot be persuaded And certainly for such persons it is at least a less evil to profess themselves Christians though dissemblingly than not so much as to profess themselves so both in regard of the honour which is done Religion even in professing it and the edification of others who may be moved by their example and that they are by this means taken from the sins of open hostilities against the truth And 2. You must not presently condemn all of dissimulation who are brought to a sense of their duty by fear Otherwise you will condemn all the penal laws of the Commonwealth as tending to make their Subjects dissemblingly loyal and all Gods providential crosses and menaces of hell as tending rather to make men profess themselves Christians rather than be damned c. For frequent experience cannot but have informed you who are so very experienced that the fear of Man as well as of God has to many proved the beginning of true wisdom that good Christians have found more occasion to bless God for their crosses than their consolations that the terrible vengeance of God against sinners even in this life under the Old Testament was a great restraint to that hard-hearted people to deterr them from their sins and to reduce them to solid real piety whom we find less efficaciously moved to their duty by any other means For I pray consider 3. That this dissimulation which you seem to suppose to be the ordinary consequent of exterior compulsion cannot indeed have any place but upon these conditions that 1. The sufferer do believe his cause to be good and 2. That such belief be grounded on conscientious motives whether really or apparently conscientious I now dispute not seeing the person must act according to the evidence of his own conscience however really erroneous after he has used his best endeavours for its information and 3. That this persuasion of his conscience be unalterable or at least 4. That such exteriour compulsion be neither a means nor a probable occasion to make men alter their opinions atleast not to make good and conscientious persons to alter at least not ordinarily so that it be presumed that the multitude of goodmen cannot be altered upon such terms and therefore that if the multitude do they cannot be generally presumed to do it on just and conscientious motives and yet 5. That notwithstanding his being persuaded as formerly he be by his exterior compulsion wrought on to make an unveracious exteriour profession NOW to shew briefly that none of these hold at least not all of them which is requisite for your purpose I must premise 1. That the design of this kind of discourse against these coercive means if it be to hinder them must be to persuade them in whose power they are that is the Church or the Magistrate that their practice were sinful to them That 2. Nothing can be imputably sinful to Governours but what either does or may in the use of their utmost moral diligence appear to them to be so So that it is not your opinion of the sinfulness of such coercion that can prove it sinful to them unless they be of the
he has power which he had though he knew it not antecedently to their Declaration or to hinder him of the exercise of that power which he has and may know that he has independently on their Declaration and therefore can be onely to judge for themselves in order to their own acceptance So that if they refuse him that cannot in conscience hinder him from either finding or proselyting others that will accept him And in the mean time he may exercise that power where he can and exercise it to the full extent of it as far as himself conceives it to extend because he must on these principles be supposed to have it and to know he has it whether they accept of it or not § XII I KNOW some things are suggested in this way of Management which are not actually observed by Mr. Baxter nor Mr. Humfrey nor any other that I know of that has undertaken this Hypothesis and I believe some things which when they see how consequentially they destroy all Ecclesiastical Order and Government themselves will then perhaps be willing to disown But I am confident nothing has been added but what has been for the advantage of the Argument and what is consequential and agreeable to the main Hypothesis and for that they must whether they will or no be responsible till they are pleased to disown the Hypothesis to which it is consequent Certainly it is much more defensible than the bare Simile's of the Husbands power over the Wife or of the power conveyed by an Original Charter to all succeeding Posterity 'T is true indeed that no compacts of the Wife with the Husband can diminish that Right which was never given him by any Compact of hers for that very reason because God never left her at her liberty whether she should be subject or no but onely to chuse the person to whom she was in particular to pay Subjection But certainly my Reasoning will hold if Ecclesiastical Power be properly given by the Mediation of those Ecclesiastical Persons who minister in the Act of Ordination And that it is not properly given by them is onely begged by that Similitude but proved onely by the Hypothesis now mentioned But as for Charters the Instance is very unhappy to their purpose They cannot I believe give an Instance in any Humane Charters where bare qualifications though acknowledged and acknowledged by them who have power to invest them in office are thought sufficient to invest them without some further act of them who have power to invest them They cannot give an Instance where the Acts of such acknowledgedly qualified but not invested persons are thought valid in Law or the Acts of persons lawfully invested though confessedly less qualified are not thought valid a plain sign that their Investiture does properly confer such power They cannot give an Instance of any power settled by Charter where upon a faileur of all who are by the Charter impowered to dispose of Offices that power must devolve to those who are not by the Charter impowered on foresight of such a case to dispose of them and where such a Charter is not thought in Law to fail by becoming unpracticable till the supreme unaccountable Power be pleased again to interpose concerning it which is the very case impugned by me in the Nonconformists They cannot give an Instance of any Humane Charter that ever allows any person impowered to extend his own power by a private exposition of the Charter against the sense of all the visible supreme Powers of the Society and not onely to challenge it on such an account but to practice it also or that does ratifie such practice when attempted or that does not look on it as invalid as well as irregular Yet this is also their Case who arrogate this power of ordaining others against the sense and permission of all their supreme visible Governours § XIII BESIDES many things are taken for granted very confidently in this Hypothesis which they will find extremely difficult to prove when they are put to it Where can they find such a Charter for the power of Presbyters in the Scriptures as they speak of Where can they find their power described in any professed Constitution concerning it They may indeed some actual practises of Presbyters there but will they call that a Charter Will they make all actual practises obligatory for ever and unalterable by the prudence of succeeding Ages Are not many actual practises grounded on circumstances Are not many of those circumstances obnoxious to great mutability Are not ordinary Governours the competent Judges of their actual change If any practises be grounded on unalterable reasons it will be by those reasons that they must become unalterable not from their being barely actual practices not from their being barely historically mentioned in the Scriptures And what is that reason that makes such a just proportion of power immutably due to the Office of Presbyters Yet when all is done it is not reason but writing that makes a Charter Where do they find men plead Charters in humane affairs upon so weak pretences to them And where is it that reason is admitted to prove the right of an actual practice of power Reason does indeed prove it fit that men should have that power given them which is reasonable Does it therefore follow that they actually have that power which it is reasonable they should have If they actually have it not given them by those who had power to give it them that is sufficient to prove their practice of it an Usurpation and utterly invalid as to all intents and purposes of Law But for matter of fact I do not see but that this supposition concerning the inseparable connexion of the power of Ordination with the office of a Presbyter will rather ruine than advance their Cause as I have accordingly retorted it in my former Book Since it is certain that this power of ordaining others was not given to the first dividing Presbyters it will follow plainly that they were not made Presbyters at all if the power of Ordination be essential to the office of a Presbyter And then their succession will fail as well on account of their want of true Presbyters as of their Presbyters wanting the power of Ordination § XIV BUT neither did I onely overthrow their succession on account of their first Ministers not receiving this power of Ordaining others from the Bishops who ordained them but from the invalidity of that act by which they derived their Orders to their Successors supposing they had indeed received a power of Ordination Supposing they had it yet they could not exercise it but in lawful Assemblies which none but the Bishops as Presidents of the Presbyteries had power to indict nor yet even there supposing all Presbyters equal could they carry it but by plurality of suffrages And therefore the generality of their later Ordinations being performed by single over-voted persons without the consent of the
greater part of those Presbyteries of which they were originally Members and out of lawful Assemblies must on these accounts be not onely irregular but invalid too Here therefore no Presbyters were at all made and therefore it is in vain to talk of Charters to prove the power of legal Presbyters when these are not the persons of whom those Charters speak and whose power they are conceived to describe And the same is applicable also to the Commonalty Neither can they exert any power of which they might otherwise have been capable but by majority of Votes and in regular Assemblies If they do it is Null by the fundamental principles even of Democratical Government This therefore will destroy the validity of their second Ordinations though their first had been valid will null all their Ordinations in the state of Separation though the Orders received by them in the Churches Communion had been as valid and valid to as great purposes as they can pretend to prove by any Charters These are Arguments not that I know of insisted on by Jansenius not answered by Voet or Mr. Baxter not I believe thought of or considered either by them or by any others of our Adversaries that have most accurarely managed their cause and will hold if they were as succesful as themselves desire in answering the others The Hypothesis therefore thus managed is that which alone it is their Interest to stand by And if this prove nothing or nothing to their purpose we shall have no reason to be very solicitous for any thing else that is pretended by them § XV I HAVE said several things in answer to this same Argument as urged by Mr. Humfrey a person of much more candour and judgment and elaborate thoughtfulness than Mr. Baxter I am unwilling to repeat any thing there said more than I needs must though he has served it as he uses to do Answers passed them all by without any notice taken of them Yet he is the person who has the confidence to complain of being forced to repetitions What I shall now say shall rather be with a prospect on the Argument it self and with reference to some worthy Brethren of our own Communion than on account of any new Obligation I can think my self under from any thing new observed by Mr. Baxter First therefore I shall onely desire at present that what has been said Chap. XXII of my former Book be onely understood on supposition that Ecclesiastical Power is not conferred immediately by God but mediately by the interposition of the Ordainers And on that supposition I cannot conceive what reason there can be to question it Who can doubt but that supposing Ecclesiastical Power to be properly their gift it must be conveyed to others by virtue of some compact of theirs whose gift it is as all other gifts are to which any one else can pretend a legal right Who can doubt but the legal validity of all such Conveyances depends upon that which the Law presumes to be the intention of the Giver Who can doubt but that the Law presumes every one to mean that which he ought to mean Who can doubt but that in all like cases of legal judicature that is still presumed to be the sense of the Law which is the sense of all the visible Makers and Executioners of Laws no legal appeal being ever admitted to Powers future or invisible Who can doubt that if the Laws be competent Judges in any case they are most so in such cases wherein publick not private Right is concerned such as is that of Ecclesiastical Power which is the subject of our present Dispute Who can doubt but the visible Powers of any Communion must judge that all Ordainers ought to mean to give that Power which by the principles of their Communion is thought proper for the Office to which the person is ordained and to mean to withhold that which by the principles of their Communion is thought unlawful to be given to that Office Who can doubt but where it was thought Heresie to believe that Bishops and Presbyters had the same power there it must also have been thought unlawful to give it them Who can doubt but that where the Power of Ordination was taken for the peculiar prerogative of the Bishop there it must have been thought unlawful to give this particular branch of power of simple Presbyters If all these suppositions agree with the matter of fact in that Age wherein these separations were first made I cannot possibly conceive how that power of ordaining others on which the validity of the present Sacraments and Ordinances of our several Sects do at present depend could have been conveyed to the first Presbyters of the several Parties by any gift of those Bishops and Presbyteries who first ordained them So that if they will pretend at all to have it they must necessarily bethink themselves of some other Hypothesis such as this by which they might have it antecedently to and independently on the gift of the Ordainers § XVI 2. THEREFORE I desire it may be observed further that this Hypothesis is not agreeable to the notions or practices of any Party whatsoever that owns any such thing as Ecclesiastical Power for the suppression of Heresie or the prevention of Schism but onely for Enthusiasts who utterly deprive the Church of any such power or of being a political Society I do not say but that it may follow from some principles expresly owned by them as particularly from that principle so much received among the Sects that it is dishonourable to think that the Holy Ghost can be given by any means of Humane Ministry though of his own Appointment for the giving of the Holy Ghost was in the Jewish Theocracy the exact Method of investing any with power but onely that it is not agreeable to their notions and practices concerning Government For all that hold any such thing as Government must unless they will make it perfectly useless own a power of restraining particular persons from Innovation I mean which may in conscience oblige such persons how different soever from the sentiments of their Superiours yet even in conscience to forbear Divisions in the same Churches or erecting new ones in opposition to those which are already established But this cannot be maintained by this Hypothesis For where all that others can do can neither hinder a private person from Authority nor from knowing that he has it not even from such a knowledge as may suffice in conscience to justifie his acting pursuantly to that Authority There it is plain he is under no obligation to forbear drawing parties after him if he can As for the Interest others have in admitting him for their Minister that signifies nothing to this purpose It onely secures that they shall not be drawn away without their own consent And for that what use is there of Government If he can persuade and seduce them he will have the consent of
was to give himself to Teaching he who had the gift of Exhortation called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was to give himself to Exhortation And so they who had the gift of Government called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whether of the whole Church or particularly for managing the Church Alms then given for the use of the poor where to lay out themselves upon that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 very probably the same with that mentioned in S. Timothy And when Judas and Silas persuaded the differing Parties of Jews and Gentiles to agree in the accommodation of the Synod of Jerusalem exercising the Gift of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are observed to have done it not as ordinary Presbyters but as Prophets to whom it seems that Gift of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was then thought proper And by this means it should seem that they did designedly contrive the mutual necessity of each others gifts for the maintaining that Unity of the Spirit so much insisted on by the Apostle in his Disputes against the disorders of the gifted persons of those times that each might have some which might make him useful to his Brethren but that none should have so many of them as to disoblige him from a dependence on the gifts of others And if this was the precedent of the Apostolical Ages how false measures then do our Brethren take who are yet the greatest Pretenders of Reverence to the Scripture-times and Apostolical Precedents when they judge of the whole Ministry by this onely Imployment of Preaching But it is easie to see what Exigency of their cause has brought them to it Their great neglect of Sacraments and their contempt of Excommunication and their opposition to all that power that can give them justifiable Sacraments and their Consciousness how little their own Sacraments can oblige others to adhere to themselves who have given so ill precedents of deserting the Sacraments of those who were originally their own actual and present Superiours have obliged them to such slight thoughts of the Sacraments as if they were the least part of the Office of a Minister HAVING therefore thus proved that what power is received by any ordained person is properly given him by the Ministry of his Ordainers I cannot foresee what can be further urged against my Argument drawn from the intention of them who gave it but that taking it with the Distinctions and Limitations which I have made use of in managing it it is such as any Law or Equity either would consider in order to the validity of a Conveyance And it is easie now to make Application also to the particulars of the contrary Hypothesis as I have managed it To the I. It has been proved that power does not immediately result from those gifts which onely qualifie men for the Administration of Ecclesiastical Offices Whence also the consequences do fail that the giving or not giving of those Offices is to be proved from the giving or not giving of those gifts To the II. That gift of the Holy Ghost which does indeed immediately invest with Ecclesiastical Power is disposed of by God but not immediately but by the Ministry of the Ordainers who do not onely declare but properly convey it To the III. The gifts which in the Apostles times were antecedent to Ordination and which were judged of by the gift of discerning of Spirits in the Ordainers did not intitle to the power but onely that gift which was given in Ordination which as to the essentials of it was not extraordinary though it might be so in regard of some manifestations of it and therefore fit to be expected in all future generations To the IV. Though the Interest of the person to be ordained and the people be onely acceptance yet it has appeared that the Interest of the Ordainers is not acceptance and recognition of a power already received but the conveyance of a new power which the Candidate for Ordination had not before he received it by virtue of this conveyance from them because God does not convey it but by their Ministry To the V. The gifts described in the Scriptures were many of them extraordinary in which we are not concerned now of those that were ordinary all were not requisite in each particular person and indeed fewer were requisite according to the Discipline of those times when each of them laid out themselves on some particular imployments than now when each particular Minister must undertake all the several necessities of a Parish and this very difference of their Imployments will make the Scripture times uncapable of being precedents now when the Imployment is so much changed from what it was then and will make many more Ministers by the qualifications requisite then than can be by those which are required now all which must be owned to be valid Ministers antecedently to any humane Ordination if our Adversaries principles hold though they be not qualified for much the greatest part of that which is counted the Ministerial Imployment now Nor does it appear that the Scripture does oblige us to accept them immediately for true Ministers even upon recognition of those gifts which are indeed true qualifications And withall the Scriptures are very far from describing all the particulars of power of our present ordinary Ecclesiastical Offices with that likelyhood of design to do it and that distinctness as might in reason have been expected if the Holy Ghost or the sacred Writers had intended them as a Charter for the extent of those Offices in future Ages They do not distinguish between their Ordinaries which were to descend to their Successors and their Extraordinaries which were not They do not distinguish between Prudentials which might validly be changed by acts of humane authority and Immutables which might not They do not descend to any particulars but such as were occasioned by the Disputes of that Age. They do not so much as explain any terms which were then notorious though it could not be expected they should always be so even to the distance of our present times nor have they done any thing which upon these principles might prevent litigious Disputes concerning Government and Subjection which no doubt so good and wise a Governour as God would have done for a Society so well beloved by him as his Church if he had designed her a written Charter to appeal to for all future Generations To the VI. As it does prove that recourse were indeed to be had to the Scriptures for knowing the mind of God immediately concerning the extent of Ecclesiastical Power supposing the Power it self were immediately derived from him so by the same proportion of reasoning it confirms my argument that recourse ought now to be had to the intention of the Ordainers seeing it has appeared that God is pleased not to confer it actually but by their mediation To the VII It thence appears how irreconcileable this Hypothesis of our
still remaining Subjects not Princes notwithstanding whatsoever Deputation that does not make them absolute and unaccountable and unobnoxious to the care and cognizance of the Supreme The Application to our present case is easily made For when I mentioned the Delegation of the Bishops power to particular Parochians I onely meant such a subordinate power for governing their respective Parishes as Viceroys and Lieutenants have under Secular Monarchs for the Government of particular Provinces but this subordinate power is so far from being the proper work of a Bishop as such as that it would make him no Bishop to suppose it in him at all That therefore which is proper to a Bishop as such that is the power of compelling the Parochians to the performance of their duties is not communicated to any Parochian and when it has been communicated to any simple Presbyters it has been counted as great an effeminacy and betraying of their power as the like case in Seculars was reputed in the Secular Princes now mentioned For this was the occasion of the Abolition of the Co-episcopi about the ninth Century that the Bishops made use of them as pretences for their own sloth in the performance of their own duties If therefore any thing of this kind have crept in in the later ages I will not defend it but onely shall desire you to remember that it is not pertinent to your design of making all Presbyters as such without any such particular deputation equal with them and that your Arguments if they proved any thing are more directly levelled against Diocesan Episcopacy as such without any such abusive deputation § XV BUT this at present may suffice to shew that that power which is by the Bishops permitted to Parish Ministers does not make them Bishops nor make them who are so properly unnecessary which methinks your self might easily have understood if you had but reflected on what your self know concerning its practice among us without such dilemmatical uncertainties which would make one think you a stranger to it The other member of your dilemma you do not prosecute whether because you forgot it or that you thought it of it self sufficiently evident I know not I suppose your Argument would have been that if the power delegated by the Bishop to the inferiour Clergy were none of his own then he could not delegate it seeing that none can justly dispose of that which is not his own To this the Answer is easie from the parallel power of Princes already insisted on that this power is the Bishops the same way as that of inferiour Magistrates is the supreme Prince's not to be executed by his own person but by others obnoxious to his election and censures which is sufficient to shew that the disposal of it is his though not the Execution § XVI YOUR sixth Answer which you call your chief one is that which I before observed to be a Concession of all that I pretended to prove that a Bishop with inferiour Church-rulers can govern a scope as large as a Diocese But when in application of it to our purpose you ask Whether it follows that our Church-Monarch can oversee them all himself without any Suboverseers or rule them by Gods Word on the Conscience without any Subrulers I wonder that you should seem so to forget the practice of our Ministers of ruling our Parishes as Subrulers under the Bishop It may be your meaning is that our Parish Ministers were not allowed a part in the Supreme Government of their Churches as if that were sufficient to deny the name of proper Church-rulers But you might have remembred 1. That my desire was that the Bishops as in S. Cyprians time so now would more communicate their affairs of any considerable importance with their Presbytery And 2. That even according to the Rubricks of our Church the Parish Minister or Curate is allowed the power not onely of dissuading which yet is all that is allowed the Church by several of our Nonconforming Brethren but also of hindering notorious ill livers and uncharitable persons from the Communion onely with a provision that they signifie such their proceedings to the Ordinary within fourteen days at the furthest which was no more than necessary for keeping them to the notion of Sub not principal Rulers This quick and easie dispatch in case of the Ministers concurrence would make one wonder at your complaints concerning the dilatory proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Courts in this affair if the Clergy could be persuaded to be unanimous and vigorous in the performance of their duty And 3. As it is plain that there are many Subrulers under Princes who are not of their Privy Council so you cannot therefore conclude the Parish Ministers not to be Subrulers under the Bishop even now because all great affairs are not originally transacted by their Council Nay 4. Your self confess Legislation it self to be communicated to the inferiour Clergy in the Lower House in Convocations when they make Canons which are church-Church-Laws And this which is one of the highest acts of Government being communicated to them can you yet complain of their exclusion from Government WHEN I described the Ecclesiastical Monarchy I spoke of to be such as does appropriate the decretory power of Government to it communicating onely the executive to others you bid me hold to that What your meaning is thereby I do not know for neither do you seem to persuade me to hold to it as truth seeing you afterwards seem to dislike it Nor can I think that you would have me to hold to an error that you might have advantage of disputing against me What you except against a mere Executioner's being no Governour might easily have been prevented if you had considered that the word mere was none of mine and that the executive power was by me opposed to that which is decretory that is which is absolute and unaccountable to any Superiour on earth at least within such limits Which as it may include much more power than that which your self call more than executive that of reproving exhorting convincing c. So that decretory in this sense can agree to a subject I believe your selfe will hardly affirm And indeed if you had been pleased to follow the analogy in the civil power where I do not find you so scrupulous in Ecclesiastical you would more clearly have understood my meaning and its unconcernedness in your Exceptions For in civils at least the decretory power from whence all Laws and Rules of proceeding are originally borrowed and to which all appeals in case of difficulty in their sense or partiality of inferiour Judges are finally resolved will I believe be owned by your self as proper to the supreme Magistrate And how will you call that power of the Subject as such that is as depending hereon by a more proper name than that of executive though it may withall include something decretory in affairs of inferiour concernment which though decretory
in respect of their Inferiours is yet onely executive in relation to the sense and design of their Supreme to which they are even in such cases confined for my part I do not understand If I knew what were more either indeed expressive of my meaning or likely to be understood so by you though indeed less proper I would rather have used it than have given you occasion to leave my sense and onely to dispute the impropriety of my expressions BUT you pretend your Arguments to prove the Bishop uncapable even of the judicial work by which I suppose you mean the same that I called decretory because the exploration is part of that which you seem to imply to be neither fit to be entrusted with others nor yet possible to be managed by the Bishop in his own person in so large a circuit as a Diocese This Argument also would have been found false if applied to the Secular Power For by the same reason you may prove that a Prince cannot govern a Diocese because he cannot explore every particular crime committed within his Jurisdiction which according to you he must do in his own person if he be a Judge Consider I pray whether what you would answer in defence of the power of Princes which may not be as plausibly urged in behalf of Bishops Would you not say that there is a twofold judicial power such as determines Laws and general rules of proceeding and such as does apply them to particular facts and that the former is that onely which reserved as the prerogative of the supreme power the later onely which is that alone which alone includes exploration particular and personal is communicated to inferiour Officers And you might have descerned that the former onely was that which I called decretory and which was by me appropriated to our Supreme Ecclesiastical Monarch which you see does not necessarily include exploration And even concerning that exploration which is requisite for pronouncing Sentence in our ordinary Secular Tribunals you might have answered in behalf of Princes that it is not necessary that it be so minute and exact as might be had from a personal acquaintance with the person and observation of his humour and behaviour in the course of his life but for the Judges information that is thought sufficient which is publick and juridical upon the testimonies of honest persons who have known the person and his fact for upon these Evidences our ordinary Judges do generally proceed in sentencing such as they never saw or knew before Nor is it onely usual in practice but in reason it is thought abundantly sufficient And I pray what may be the disparity that may make this just in our Secular and unjust in our Ecclesiastical proceedings Is it that the credit of the witnesses may as well be suspected as partial or mistaken even where no grounds do appear sufficiently convictive of such a suspicion as the persons themselves Or is it that there have been frequent Experiences of their deceiving such as have relied on their Testimony And are not these difficulties as great in secular causes where yet they are not thought considerable For humane affairs are not capable of demonstrations but proceed generally on onely moral certainty oftentimes onely on probabilities which are therefore after the utmost humane diligence acknowledged fallible Yet it is thought prudent to rely even on such proofs where the publick advantage by the decision of such causes is more considerable than the prejudice that may redound to the person concerned by a particular mistake when such proof is the best that the matter is capable of or that can be had and that its failings are more rare and unusual And the same Reasons are as cogent for the like proceedings in Ecclesiastical Courts Or is it that some crimes are so secret as that they cannot be juridically discovered with such Evidence as may satisfie a prudent person without personal and particular information But you may remember that all crimes do not come under the cognizance of publick discipline but onely such as are great and notorious concerning which this cannot be pretended And as Governours have thought it just and prudent in some criminal causes to proceed on conjectures and presumptions which themselves confess harsh in some instances as judging it fitter that some few Innocents should suffer some prejudice rather than that many guilty should escape so in others where the probabilities are more frequently fallible they have rejected them as conceiving it more just that some few Nocents should escape rather that many Innocents should suffer Besides that where this publick Evidence does not appear the crime cannot be so scandalous nor consequently can the Church in such a case be so nearly concerned for its punishment INDEED in some attempts it has been found that persons have used much more liberty in private for venting and propagating scandalous Reports than when their oath has been required for publick service by which means they have at once made the crime very scandalous and yet rescued the criminal from justice But then the blame of such impunity is not to be imputed to the negligence of such a Judge but the prevarication of such witnesses and therefore will not be pertinent to our purpose And then for other less or less notorious Crimes the private power of exhorting reproving c. which you call more than executive and is no more denied a Minister in his own Parish under a Diocesan than any other Form of government may and must prove sufficient because no other is either convenient or possible Or is it that the penitence of the criminal which is requisite to his absolution which is equally an act of power as that of censure cannot be so certainly known by this publick Juridical Evidence This besides that it may be as plausibly objected in Secular Causes where personal penitence at least that which is judged so is as much required to absolution from secular penalties and where these Juridical Evidences are perfectly as fallible will not appear so difficult as it may seem if it be considered what kind of penitence is requisite for this Ecclesiastical Absolution 1. Not a universal penitence for all sins but onely those which he had been before censured for 2. These not secret but publick and notorious For none but these can be scandalous and none but scandalous sins do fall under publick Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction And 3. Not real penitence even for these themselves but onely so far as it may be signified to the satisfaction of a prudent person by exteriour indications And 4. These exteriour indications not private but publick such as publick confession of the sin and asking forgiveness for it and giving publick satisfaction to the injured party and the Church and her scandalized enemies and all circumstantiated with such pregnant evidences of sincerity as may be thought sufficient probabilities of it in the judgment of equal prudent persons