appear at first view are clearly scatter'd by one very easie and obvious consideration And that is that the Christian Church as it is endued with no Temporal Authority or Power of the Sword so all the Authority that it has is founded upon the Cross of Christ and that obliges all that own it to a more entire and resign'd submission to Civil Government then Men could have been brought under by any other way without its Institution So that the Erection of our Saviour's new Kingdom within the Kingdoms of the Earth upon the Doctrine of the Cross is so far from defrauding Sovereign Princes of their Ancient Authority that it is its greatest improvement and inforcement but especially it makes the Power of Christian Sovereignâ— more absolute then all other Powers that are not Christian and even to these it raises their Soveraignty higher then it was before over all their Christian Subjects by binding them to a stricter Allegiance then their own Laws and of all other Christians those that have the highest Authority in the Church are obliged by their very Office to the most humble peaceable and absolute submission to the worst of Governments All which considerations render Christianity the most easie of any Religion in the World for compliance with the peace and quiet of Government And first as for the Notion of the Doctrine of the Cross it is singular to Christianity For all other Religions both of Jews and Gentiles had some Worldly interest twisted with them but our Saviour to avoid all mixtures of Hypocrisie abstracts his Institution from all considerations unless of the World to come And therefore first Erects his Kingdom not only without any Promise of any advantages of this life but to let his followers know what they were to trust to by the Principles of his Religion with a certain assurance of the loss of all the comforts of life and at last life it self So evident is it from the original Constitution of the Christian Church that it is so far from giving Men any claims of Worldly Interest that meerly as they are Christians they are obliged whenever they are called to it to renounce them all And this Doctrine lying at the Foundation of Christianity our Saviour was careful to settle it in the first place When he gives his Disciples their first Commission to preach the Gospel to all Nations that is the first Condition that he teaches them to require of all Proselytes He that taketh not up his Cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me i. e. He that takes not up his Religion upon condition of taking up the Cross too is no true Christian. By which expression of taking up the Cross is signified the under-going of all kind of Calamities of which the Cross was the greatest being the most shameful and most painful punishment that was used at that time And therefore Plato in his Description of a perfect good-Man that nothing shall fright out of his Duty and Conscience says of him that when he has suffered all miseries he will endure to be Crucified too So that the meaning of our Saviour's words is plainly this Let no Man expect any Worldly profit by following me and therefore not pretend that I gave him any ground for it but on the contrary such is the nature of my Institution that whoever will undertake it it must be upon no less condition then this that he be willing and ready to suffer all manner of Persecutions for it even the scandalous death of the Cross it self So plain is it that Christianity when it meets with any Opposition is to maintain it self by nothing but suffering to use no weapon but the Cross and Men that are indispensably obliged to such an absolute submission are sufficiently tyed up if any such thing be possible from creating any disturbance to the Civil State for what greater security can be contrived against that then that Men should be bound by the first Principle of their Religion with meekness and cheerfulness to resign up their Lives to the pleasure of the Government So it is in the case of Christianity they have nothing to plead but their own innocence and if that will not satisfie they have no Authority from our Saviour to upbraid the Power that condemns them and Remonstrate to the Justice of the Court but instead of that are obliged to undergo its Sentence as he did with all manner of meekness and silence Here is no disputing the Commands of Princes whether right or wrong nothing but absolute submission to their most unjust and illegal Proceedings much less any opposition to their most unwarrantable Commands nor any weapon of defence but laying down their Lives after their great Masters Example in submission to the Government This is the true and honest state of the Christian Church that every Man be faithful to the Laws of his Religion and if he suffer for it he shall be compensated with those Rewards that his Religion Promises and that is compensation enough for all that he can suffer in this World and if he take it not up with this condition it is not the Christian Religion that he takes up for it is no Christian Religion without the Cross. And so our Saviour has all along stated the matter upon all occasions And it being so stated it is easie to understand how in cases of the greatest competition both Powers so prevail at the same time as to attain both their respective Ends. For by it the Civil Power must over-rule as to all effects of this life and when it is to be thus gently submitted to in its most unjust Decrees that is a full security of the Peace and Quiet of this World and that is the proper end for which it was instituted And the Spiritual Power attains its effect as to the World to come i. e. the salvation of the Souls of Men by their Conscientious Loyalty to their Saviour and his Laws and that is all that it aims at and that every Professor of it ought to pretend to This is so plain and evident in the whole practice of the Primitive Church that one would wonder that any Man should ever dream that true Christianity could any way interfere with Civil Government For when the Powers of the World at that time particularly the Governors of the Roman Empire being under a mistaken apprehension that the new Christian Religion aim'd at Innovation in Government endeavour'd by all the methods of Cruelty to stop its progress the Christians who were all bound openly to profess their Faith and some of them to propagate it in publick notwithstanding all that bloody opposition that was made against it went on in their work without creating any the least disturbance to their Governors unless what they gave themselves by their own needless outrage against them For all that they did in their own defence was only to declare that how much soever they were displeased with the
viz. that they submitted for want of strength to make resistance because it will shew that they thought themselves obliged to suffer any thing from the Government rather then resist by the most Sacred and indispensable Laws of their Religion And first as for their Patience and Submission under all kinds of Cruelties and Oppressions it is so remarkable so entire so without reserve or exception that if it were possible the height and glory of their practice exceeded the Gallantry of their Masters Precepts And though they were eminent for all other Vertues yet in this of patience cheerfulness and magnanimity under sufferings they out-did themselves It was the hight and perfection of all their goodness it was the wonder and astonishment of their Enemies and the glory and if any thing could be so the very boast of their Religion Numberless are both the Instances of this Practice in the Records of the Church and the Assertions in the Writings of the ancient Doctors of it to own and justifie their Obligation to it But to transcribe them would be an endless work and would take up the greatest part of the Records of the first three hundred years that are for the most part employed about these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Eusebius stiles them these peaceable Wars of Martyrs and Confessors It is enough that in all that time there is not one instance of any Christians making any forcible defence or joyning in any Sedition against their Governors Though if there had been any miscarriages in that kind that could have been no objection against the truth of the Doctrine it self which is to be taken from the general Practice and Sense of the Church not from the irregularities of a few private persons And yet so far was it from that that to me it looks like Wonder and Miracle that among all the Primitive Christians who lived under Pagan and persecuting Emperors till the time of Constantine the Great which takes in the Interval of three hundred and forty years there should not be one instance of any one Christian that either taught or practised the Doctrine of resistance in any case whatsoever but that on the contrary they unanimously both taught and practised the Duty of Passive Obedience as one of the greatest and most indispensable Laws of their Religion And first as for the publick Records the Canons and Laws of the Church the case is the same here as that of Parricide in old Rome the Crime was so unknown and so unsuspected that no Provision was made against it For among all the Canonical Decrees and Censures of the Ancient Church which were all enacted to restrain some present miscarriages there is not one to be found that forbids or punishes the Sin of Resistance to Lawful Superiors The Christians of the Primitive Church were so firmly fix't in their Duty here by our Saviour's and his Apostles Precepts and by the constant Instructions and Unanimous Sense of their Pastours and Teachers that they supposed that they could not make any resistance to the most unjust violence of their Persecutors without renouncing Christianity it self And that is the reason why this Crime was then never restrained by Ecclesiastical Censures because it was then never committed And though there are scarce any other Sins for which the Church has not appointed proper Penances because they were some time or other put in practice yet the sin of Rebâ—llion was the only Crime for which it had no Penance because there never was any one instance of it to give any â—ccasion for a Law against it Nay so far was the Church from doing any thing prejudicial to the Rights of Sovereign Powers that it was careful and tender of the Interests of Families in pursuance of its Fundamental Principle that Christianity was to make no alteration in any Civil Rights whatsoever And therefore in the 82 Apostolical Canon it is provided That no Servant be admitted into Holy Orders without his Master's consent because as they give the reason of the Law that would be a subversion of Families And for that reason it was made one of the Articles framed against St. Chrysostom by his Adversaries in the Synod under the Oak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That he had Ordain'd other Mens Servants before they were set at liberty And in the third Canon of the Council of Gangra it is Decreed That whoever teaches Servants to forsake their Masters upon the account of Religion be Anathematised This Synod of Gangra was assembled against a particular Sect of Fanatiques in Armenia that under the pretence of a more refin'd and spiritual Religion became perfect Ranters and Levellers and so subverted all Rights both Sacred and Civil as they are excellently described in an Epistle of the Bishops of the Synod to the Bishops of Armenia prefixt to their Canons and among the many other disorders into which these wild Enthusiasts â—an themselves this was one that they taught Servants to run away from their Masters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon the pretext of Godliness which as well as all their other absurd Principles is here justly and as Zonaras observes in pursuance of the Apostolical Doctrine Anathematifed These are all the Canons that I know of in the Ancient Church that concern Mens Civil Rights so rarely were they invaded or violated among the Primitive Christians but the first Canons that I meet with against Rebellion were the three Anathema's of the Council of Toledo in the year 633 When the Romans being driven out of Spain by the Goths and they being settled in the peaceful Government of the Country after the death of Cinthilas who first obtain'd the Crown and the Peoples consent to it Sisinandus his Son summon'd this Council in the first year of his Reign to Anathematise all Persons that should any way attempt any thing against his Crown Life or Dignity But this was meerly contrived for the security of his Government against the Romans and to preserve his new Subjects from Revolting to their old Masters and was not made to condemn the Doctrine of Resistance as if it had been taught at that time but to abet their Oath of Allegiance and for that reason the Anathema upon the Offender is founded upon the sin of Perjury The next passage that I remember to provide against all Rebellion is the fragment of a Synod held by Alexius Patriarch of Constantinople under the younger Constantinus Porphyrogenneta who began his Reign in the year 975. In which all defections from or insurrections against the Emperour are Anathematised and so is the Priest that gives absolution to any Rebels before they return to their Duty and Allegiance The occasion of this Law I know not but whatever it was I know no other of the same nature till the Hildebrandine Apostacy whose barbarous proceedings against the Emperour Henry the Fourth were immediately censured and condemned by a Council of Thirty Bishops assembled at Brixia in the year 1080 and
St. Cyprian is as express for Passive Obedience join'd with Loyal Prayers as any of his Predecessors Nemo nostrum quando apprehenditur reluctatur necâ—â—se adversus injustam violentiam vestram quamvis nimius copiosus noster sit Populus ulciscitur Innocentes nocentibus cedunt insontes paenis cruciatibus acquiescunt None of us when he is apprehended resists and though our numbers are great and considerable we do not think of revenging our selves against your unjust Oppressions the Innocent submit to the Guilty and sit down quietly under Pains and Tortures And then a little after this he adds That though we are treated thus barbarously yet we cease not to pray for the expulsion of your Enemies for seasonable Rains for removing or abating publick Calamities begging of God day and night with the greatest importunity for your peace and safety that are our Persecutors And in this time they were so tender of doing any thing offensive to the Civil Government or any way contrary to their Commands that they judged it not lawful for a Christian that was banisht for his Religion to return into his own Country without the leave and warrant of Authority So that St. Cyprian reckoning up in his Epistle to the Confessors in the Decian Persecution divers scandals that some of them had given to the Christian Church particularly of some that lived in continual Debauchery and Uncleanness either from their very Baptisme or their Confession next to these he tells them Alius in eam Patriam unde extorris factus est regreditur ut deprehensus non quasi Christianus sed quasi nocens pereat Another returns back into his Countrey from whence he had been commanded into Banishment where if he be apprehended let him know that he suffers not as a Christian but as a Malefactor From all which passages it is evident beyond all contradiction that it was the unanimous sense of all the most eminent Doctors of the ancient Church that nothing was more contrary to the whole frame and constitution of Christianity then resistance to the Civil Government in any case whatsoever and that in case of Persecution and Oppression for it Passive Obedience was their indispensable duty which upon any provocation to violate any way was judged no less a Crime then renouncing the Christian Faith It were easie to have collected a vast number of passages out of the Writings of the Ancients to the same purpose and divers such Collections have been made by Learned Men but I have selected these peculiar passages out of my own little observation because they do not only give us their Opinion but the ground upon which they build it from the reason and the nature of their Religion and that gives it a perpetual and unalterable Obligation in all times and cases and how various soever the Affairs of the World may be yet this duty can never be alter'd by any change of circumstances because it is as unchangeable as the nature of our Religion so that as long as Christianity lasts it must for ever equally oblige all Christians under all circumstances and in all conditions Neither do they teach the Doctrine of Non-resistance meerly as Doctors of the Christian Church as it is a Law of their Religion but as Philosophers or men that understood the Interest of Mankind and the Original of Government For the reason which they unanimously alledge for it is this that all Governments in the World are every where fix't by the Providence of the Supreme Governor of it and for that reason they take it to be their Wisdom as well as their Duty peaceably to acquiesce in the settled and establish't Government how ill soever administred and leave the punishment of its ill-administration by particular persons to him from whom they received their Authority Now this Doctrine of Non-resistance or Submission being so universally taught and that upon such unalterable principles and reasons one would think it enough to set it above all manner of exception or evasion And yet such is the perverseness of the several Anti-Christian Factions of Christendom that they break through all these Restraints into all the licentiousness of Rebellion But this they do with that impudence against the common sense of Mankind and that violence to their own Consciences that they would have done much more prudently to have wholly slighted and rejected the Authority of the ancient Lacrymists then admitting it to make so poor and dull a mistake from its obligation For they all agree in this one slender and inconsistent Plea that this Doctrine was only suited to their present necessity because they then wanted power to make resistance That is to say in one soft and friendly word that they were a Race of the rankest Knaves and Fools that ever appeared among Mankind That when our Saviour had strictly forbid it as inconsistent with the nature of his Religion and the Fundamental Doctrine of the Cross. That when the Apostles reinforced the same precept with all the earnestness and all the motives in the World particularly out of duty to God and their Religion And that when the whole succession of Christians from their time to After-ages profess'd and practiced the same duty upon the same Principles To tell us after all this that 't is all Hypocrisie and Dissimulation nothing but a Primitive Jesuitical Trick to blind their Governors with fine Stories of the unlawfulness of taking up Arms in their own defence when the only reason of it was that they had no Arms to take up and that it was nothing but sufficient strength and ability to resist that kept them off from actual Rebellion This is such a contradiction to all their avowed Protestations to the Notoriety of the matter of Fact itself to all their Apologies and to their own defiance of so durty a surmize as amounts to no better account then giving them all the open Lye and for that reason I think it would have been much better to have at first once for all trampled upon the Authority of such tame Creatures then to shift it off with such a senseless and shameless Evasion And upon that account I suppose it was that it was at last forsaken in our late Rebellion and new pretences devised in its stead but of such a daring boldness and blasphemy against Heaven itself that they would sooner affright a wise man to hear them then puzzle a Fool to answer them and those are the prophane Pleas of the Independants to justifie his Majesties Murther viz. New Discoveries and Revelations from Heaven it self It seems the Villany was so horrid in itself that nothing less could bear out their confidence in committing it then the immediate Authority of God himself And thus they are not ashamed to tell us That the Doctrine of Non-resistance was not a seasonable priviledge for that age and therefore not discover'd because it would have hindred the birth of Antichrist whose coming into the World
the word that he had always in his mouth all the misfortune was that he fell into ill hands and by their advice endeavour'd it the wrong way His high Opinion of the honesty of some ill Church-Men was the Principle that exposed him to all that abuse that was put upon him all his life time It was his confidence in Eusebius and his Partisans that did drive him into that unhappy course that he took for the attainment of his desired Peace All their advice was Oracle to him and made him both deaf and blind to all other information But otherwise setting aside this unhappy oversight of being over-rul'd by ill Men he seems to have been so far from all thoughts of robbing the Church of its own inherent rights that he thought he could never shew it kindness enough by heaping continual favours of his own upon it he granted it more Priviledges and greater Immunities then any other Emperor and whereas his Father Constantine only exempted Ecclesiasticks from all Personal burthens in the Common-wealth he has in divers Rescripts freed them from all manner of Taxes and Impositions whatsoever and a very little time before his death he publisht an Edict to Establish the perpetual security of all his former Grants with this reason at the end of it as it were his dying words Gaudere â—nim gloriari ex side semper volumus scientes magis Religionibus quà m Officiis Labore corporis vel sudore nostram rempublicam contineri i. e. as Gothofred paraphrases it We freely grant all these Immunities to the Ministers of Religion as knowing that the Publick Weal will lose nothing by all their exemptions from its service but gain greater blessings from their Prayers and Devotions then they could have contributed to it by any other way of Attendance And this very thing is all along upbraided to him by the counterfeit Hilary in his Book against him that whilst he pretended so much kindness to the Christian Church and Clergy he by his ill Government betrayed the one and oppress 't the other Auro reipublicae Sanctum Dei honoras vel detracta templis vel publicata Edictis vel exacta paenis Deo ingeris Osculo Sacerdotes excipis quo Christus est proditus Caput benedictioni summittis ut fidem calces convivio dignaris ex quo Judas ad proditionem egressus est censum capitum remittis quem Christus ne Scandalo esset exolvit Vectigalia Caesar donas ut ad negationem Christianos invites quae tua sunt relaxas â—t quae Dei sunt amittantur So that it is evident from his Story and the Confession of his Enemies that he was a true lover of the Christian Church and a zealous Promoter of Religion and only miscarried by following the advice of the Eusebians which they gave him for their own ends and with what grosness they abused him all along we have seen through every Stage of his life And this is the ground of those high Commendations that are given him by Gregory Nazianzen because he was of himself a true lover of Religion and designed nothing but the Peace and settlement of the Church though under that plausible pretence his good nature and integrity were imposed upon by wicked Men to compass their own wicked designs against the true peace of the Catholick Church And that was the folly and misfortune that they drew him into not to acquiesce in the Authoritative determination of the Church in so great a Council as that of Nice which had he done it had continued in the same Peace and Tranquility in which his Father left it But when instead of that he endeavoured to remove the setled Foundation as it was laid by the true and proper Builders it is no wonder if the whole Fabrick fell upon his own head and buried his whole Reign under its Ruins And it is very likely that his impatience under so awkerd a Burthen when he could not clear himself of it put him at last upon those angry courses that he took to obtain his Will And as at last it perplext so it debaucht his Government for till the Conquest of Magnentius he seem'd to have behaved himself like a wise and able Prince but had not leisure to attempt much less perform any thing great by reason of his perpetual attendance upon this Controversie And that may be a warning to all Princes That when a Controversie of Religion is once laid by a fair and legal decision to beware how they suffer it to rise again lest it prove too strong and stubborn to submit to a second Exorcism However by the different behaviour of these two Princes in interposing in the Controversies of the Church and the different event of their actings in it we have before our Eyes clear examples of right and wrong methods of Government Constantine when he found a Faction in the Church settles peace by the Authority of the Church without putting any restraints upon it and what that determin'd he first made a Law to himself and then to his Subjects and would never after permit it to be call'd in question and by this means he quell'd a dangerous Faction and freed himself from any direct disturbance from it all his own Reign But his Son Constantius on the contrary not acquiescing in the Canonical determination of the Church broke down all the Banks of Government and let in that Inundation of Dispute that overwhelm'd his whole Reign But being sensible of the trouble that he had brought upon himself by having once dismantled the Churches Authority he thought to help himself out by retrieving its force but still the more he strugled the more he entangled himself because instead of setling things by fair and free Councils and unless they are so they are no Councils of Christs Officers but meer Executioners of the Princes Commands himself ever endeavour'd to over-rule all the Councils that he call'd either by fraud or violence And then no wonder when they were so hamper'd if they were not able to attain the end of their Institution And that was the fatal miscarriage of his Reign his garbling the Authority of Councils turning them into Courts of Guards and abetting forty or fifty Seditious Men against the whole Body of Catholick Bishops otherwise if they had been permitted the free exercise of their own proper Authority all things had been carried with that gravity and decency that became the Christian Church as we see by the great Councils of Sardica and Ariminum that had effectually setled the Nicene Faith had not the Emperor cut asunder their Decrees with his Sword and set up an Eusebian Rump in defiance and opposition to the whole Council And therefore whereas some Men are pleased to upbraid the Churches Authority with the miscarriages of these Councils under Constantius they might have been pleased too to consider that the main Body of Christian Bishops discharged their duty with entire faithfulness and
integrity and that it was only the Emperor and his Court-parasites that were guilty of all the Exorbitancies committed in the Church in his time which he committed so altogether without the Churches consent that by them he oppressed it with all the outrage and violence of Persecution But from this clamour raised against the Authority of the Church upon this account and kept up at this very day with so much confidence for we find it among the doleâ—ul invectives of R. B. against the ancient Bishops in his Book of Crudities we may see what a pleasure and satisfaction it is to men of some tempers to be venting their ill nature against the true old Christian Church But Secondly as the Emperour in all his exorbitant actings own'd and supposed the power of the Church so the Catholicks submitted to all their sufferings under him with the same patience and upon the same Principle that they did to the Heathen Emperours And this is most remarkable in the Case of Athanasius who though he was persecuted and provoked beyond all Patience for the Establisht Religion of the Empire but among infinite other slanders that were loaded upon him is charged with Treason and Disloyalty yet for all this he is nice and punctual in his Obedience to all the Emperours commands even against himself and does with the greatest indignation detest the least thought of disrespect or disloyalty to his Sovereign Lord. Thus when his Enemies had slandered him to the Emperour Constantius for having spoken ill things of him and done ill Offices between him and his Brother Constans he defies the Calumny a thousand times over as only sit to be laid upon a distracted Man and calls God and his Holy Angels to witness how far it was from his thoughts and his Principles to speak the least ill word of a Sovereign Prince And when in the second place they charged him for having held correspondence with the Rebel Magnentius here he professes himself amazed and consounded with the greatness of the Lye and wonders how any man should be so strangely beside himself as to â—eign such an incredible Calumny against him He be such a Beast as to be friend to such a Monster as had Rebell'd against and Murther'd his Royal Master No he would rather dye Ten Thousand Deaths then be guilty of one such Disloyal Though And beseeches the Emperour that he would never entertain such an hard opinion of the Christian Church as if it were possible for Christians but much more Bishops to entertain any thoughts like Disloyalty and invokes the God of Heaven and Earth who gave the Empire to Constantius and to whom alone he could appeal from him as being his only Superiour to clear his innocence from so foul a Calumny And whereas in the third place they object that when the Emperour commanded his departure from Alexandria he refused to obey it To this he answers God sorbid that I should be such a wretch as to slite any of his Majesties Commands No he made Conscience of refusing Obedience but to the Questor of a City much more to his Sovereign Lord the Emperour Then discovers to him how the Eusebians had forged Letters in the Emperours Name for his Banishment and tells him that it was upon the assurance of the Forgery that he refused complyance but otherwise assures him that he is not so mad as to disobey any of his own Commands whatsoever so that if he had been pleased to Command him from Alexandria he would have been gone at the first notice and prevented the Command by the promptness of his Obedience The sense of all which is that it is no less then downright madness for any man that pretends to Christianity to make resistance to any Commands of his Sovereign Prince and this he writes whilst he was forced for the security of his life to lye conceal'd in the Wilderness after he had been persecuted by Constantius with the utmost rancour and a thousand times worse then a Mid-night Robber for above twenty years together and in truth had suffered such things from his hands as never any other Subject did from any Prince For his Case is singular and has nothing like it in Story Constantius his treating of him exceeded the injustice and cruelty of all the Heathen Tyrants and yet after all this prodigious and unparallel'd Provocation not only against the Laws of the Empire but of all Humanity how tender is this great spirited Man of making the least abatement of respect and duty to his Prince However he was pleased to treat him he was obliged by his Religion as he would acquit himself from madness not so much as to entertain a thought of the least resistance to any of his Commands in shortc onsidering the strange usage he had met with from the Emperour through his whole life his Story is the greatest instance and demonstration of a religious Sense of Loyalty that is upon Record It is true that Lucifer Calaritanus bestowed his rude Language upon the Emperour liberally enough but he was a man of a prodigiously fierce implacable nature as appears by the Schism that he made in the Church leaving its Communion rather then be reconciled to any of the Arian or Eusebian Clergy upon their repentance and submission which was such a piece of sowreness and austerity as could not but eat up all Sense of civility and good manners and therefore it is no wonder if a man of such a splenetick temper were so free of his Contumelious Language without respect of Persons especially when his natural rudeness was heightned and emproved by that false Principle that Christian Bishops might treat Heretick Princes after the same rate that the Prophets in the Old Testament did Apostate Princes and by that he answers Constantius his complaint of rudeness and insolence against him Dixisti passum te ac pati a nobis contra monita sacrarum scripturarum contumeliam dicis nos insolentes extitisse circa te quem honorari decuerit quasi quisquam dei cultorum pepercit Apostatis You complain that we have given you contumelious language against the commands of the Holy Scriptures you say that we behave our selves after an insolent manner towards you whom we ought to honour as if any Servant of God were to spare Apostates And then proceeds to a Catalogue of all the prophetick burthens against Apostate and Idolatrous Princes in the Old Testament But I am not at all concern'd to excuse him when he quitted the Catholick Communion and joyned Faction with the Rebel Puritans the Donatists as we have seen above Though this is to be said for him that how far soever he might proceed in foul Language he was so far from making any invitation to proceed to violent Actions that he concludes his whole Book with a passionate exhortation to Patience and Martyrdom So that hitherto the Doctrine of resistance to Sovereign Princes in any circumstances whatsoever or
were plaid at Antioch the great Scene of his shame and folly Hither at his first coming Artemius an old Commander under Constantine and who for his good Services had obtain'd a good Government in AEgypt under Constantius is sent for by the Emperor under pretence of serving in the Persian Expedition but when he comes he is suddenly put to death upon pretence of Treason though the real Crime was that he had been the chief Agent under the Christian Emperors in the destruction of Idols Artemius is followed by the two famous Captains Juventinus and Maximus who bemoaning the Restitution of Idolatry are by the Emperor cast into Prison upon the sham of Treason where divers attempts are made upon them to betray their Religion but all in vain their constant answer is That they are always ready to lay down their Lives but never their Religion and so at length they are privately beheaded This is all the harm that we know of them and yet they are exhibited to the World among that Pack of Julian Christians that pursued their Prince as if he were a midnight Thief or an High-way-Robber The next Set of bloody Conspirators against the Apostate's life were Abbass Publia and her Quire of Virgins that persisted to sing Anthems against Idolatry at such times as his Majesty passed by their Chappel at which he was at last so enraged that he very honourably commanded one of his Souldiers to beat the old Woman that was Mistress of the Quire so that he made her nose bleed Which contumelious Usage says the Historian she received as the highest honour as the Apostles did when they were beaten too that they were accounted worthy to suffer shame for Christ. And therefore the old Woman and her Maids were so far from pursuing him as a Thief and a Robber that they did not so much as return him any warm Language These are all the instances of Rebellion against the Apostate that I know of unless we may add that very credible Romance of an old decrepit Bishop threatning to kick the Emperor in the head of his Praetorian Bands at which the great Soldier that had fought so many Battels was so scared that he was forced to betake himself to his Heels These are all those numberless Instances in the great variety whereof a man may almost lose himself which may be given of the Christians hatred and contempt of Julian when he was Emperor How they reproached him and hiâ— Religion to his very beard beat his Priests before his face and had done him too if he had not got out of the way But whatever becomes of all the other Outrages there is no other instance of the danger of his own being beaten but by this old man that had lost the use of his Limbs who yet it seems would have kick't him before his own Guards had he not run away Any Passive Obedience how sneaking soever would have been much more Manly and Heroick then to kick one that was so great a Coward that in the head of his Troops had not courage enough to stand the brunt against the impotent fury of Fourscore and Ten. But what shall we say to the other objection That if the old Bishops did not beat him yet the young Divines jear'd him gave him Nick-names and Lampoon'd him to his beard This I must confess is a great fault to offer any indignity to the Person of a Sovereign Prince and reflects scorn and contempt upon his Government But yet I hope there is some distance between breaking an indiscreet jest and breaking out into open Rebellion For that is our design to prove that in the days of Julian the Doctrine and Duty of Passive Obedience was out of doors and that the Christians who would have quietly submitted to the Laws under a Nero or a Dioclesian pursued Julian as a midnight Thief or an High-way Robber That is plainly that they thought it Lawful to resist and pursue him by force and that I think is Rebellion though indeed therâ— was no need of such broad Expressions as of hunting a Thief or a Robber for if the obligation to Passive Obedience be once taken off active Resistance immediately takes place and that again is actual Rebellion Now what a strange leap in arguing is this from a jest upon a Princes Beard to raise an Army to cut his Throat For that is the inference here to prove that the Christians in his time thought it Lawful to resist and rebel against his Government because they Lampoon'd his Whiskers But certainly men must have a very sharp stomach to Rebellion that can encourage themselves to fall on upon such slender Invitations But to state the matter aright between the Imperial Beard and its sawcy Subjects if it met with any rough and uncivil usage it may thank its Owner for it who indeed brought that rude treatment into fashion by Lampooning all his Predecessors And if Princes will condescend so low as to write Libels themselves they must pardon the Poets if they give them as good as they bring for there is no King of Wit And therefore this Pedantick Prince putting himself upon such an equal Level with his Subjects by vying Wit or rather Buffoonry with them which no Prince beside himself ever did it can scarce amount to an act of Treason if they made so bold with his Beard And the truth of it is his Beard was so very singular and remarkable that no Stoick could well pass it by without a fling at it for it was the very Comet of a Beard upon a Boys face and that alone was a very provoking and ridiculous sight And let but the Reader peruse his Coins especially that in which his young self is drawn with the old Goddess Serapis and then I may challenge him to forbear smiling if he can And long before this Beard was assaulted by the ill-bred Antiochian Citizens it had been Canonised when he was much younger in the Court of Constantius where as Ammianus Marcellinus his Panegyrist informs us he was Nick-named the Goat for his long Beard and not only so but a pratling Mole a Monkey in Purple a Greek Pedant All which the Historian imputes to their Envy of his great Glory and parallels his Case with Cimons that Envy accused of Luxury and with Scipio's that it charged with too much love of Ease and with Pompey's that was blamed for too much neatness These are little defects incident to great Men that their spiteful Enemies might take advantage of to Eclypse the Glory of their Vertue with the Rabble but as for these Pedantick Affectations for which Julian was so highly despised they could not be incident to any Man that was not a remarkable Fopp But beside all this we must consider to what sort of Men the Antiochian Provocation was given and that was to the Poets by his discountenancing and discouraging the Play-Houses by which they were undone and they are a sort of men
only Arius two Bishops and two Presbyters stood to the Arian Cause All the following troubles proceeded from the revenge and malice of the Nicomedian Eusebius His Plot against Athanasius by Ischyras and the Meletian Evidences The brutish and barbarous proceedings against him at the Council of Tyre pag. 370. § IX By what Stratagem the banishment of Athanasius and the Restitution of Arius was procured The fabulous reports of Philostorgius and Sandius Constantine's innocence clear'd as to the sufferings of Athanasius and the Charge of Arianism pag. 390. § X. Of the division of the Empire between the Sons of Constantine The Controversie under Constantius not managed between the Catholicks and Arians but the Catholicks and the Eusebians pag. 409. § XI The mystery of the crafty Proceedings of the Council of Antioch against Athanasius discovered his Absolution at Rome Pope Julius his Letter and Eusebius his death pag. 421. § XII The sufferings of Paul of Constantinople from the Eusebians An account of the Councils of Sardica and Philippopolis The craft of the Eusebians in dividing the Council pag. 441. § XIII The Issue of both Councils Athanasius his triumphant Restitution By what Calumny his second banishment was procured The wild Proceedings of Constantius at the Council of Milan pag. 451. § XIV The banishment of Liberius and Hosius The black Characters of the Ring-leading Eusebians Particularly describing the wickedness and cruelty of St. George of Alexandria pag. 465. § XV. The Photinian Heresie The Council of Sirmium against it It s right time stated against Petavius Made up of Eusebians Of the forged Creed of Valens in the name of the Council Of the Council of Ancyra Hosius vindicated from subscribing the second Sirmian Creed The ground of St. Hilary's mistake about it His Book against Constantius proved to be spurious Pope Liberius vindicated from Heresie but not from disingenuity pag. 476. § XVI Of the Anomaeans A Character of Aëtius Of the Conference at Sirmium and the reconciling Creed Of the Council of Arimnium Of Valens and his Conventicle Of the fraud and force put upon the Council pag. 502. § XVII Of the Council of Seleucia and the breach between the Eusebians and the Acacians The Emperour over-reach't by the Acacians Of the Banishment of the Eusebians Of the Acacian Council at Antioch Of the Fanatick Sects of the Massalians and Eustathians pag. 519. § XVIII The Power of the Church own'd though oppress 't by Constantius The great difference of his Reign before and after the Conquest of Magnentius All Councils before Free all after forced His ill Actings excused as proceeding from mistake not malice His great kindness to the Christian Church The Reigns of Constantine and Constantius compared Of the signal Loyalty and Passive Obedience of Athanasius pag. 533. § XIX Of the Reign of Julian his great zeal for Paganism His design to destroy Christianity by Liberty of Coâ—science The Church not only preserved but settled by the free use of its own Authority Of the Actings of St. Athanasius and St. Hilary for its settlement The Apostates fury against Athanasius for it The baseness of his Persecution The Passive Obedience of the Christians under it pag. 562. § XX. The gross impertinency of alledging their example to warrant Resistance supposing its truth It s horrible falsehood proved from the whole History of his Reign and their behaviour towards the Imperial Beard clear'd of all blame pag. 578. Errata PAge 33. Line 9. for a read any p. 42. l. 17. for a r. no. p. 80. l. 17. for effect r. affect p. 84. l. 22. for make r. makes p. 97. l. 2. for domini r. dominii p. 153. l. 9. for imminent r. eminent ibid. l. 25. for ought r. ought not p. 157. l. 4. for Castrian r. Cassian p. 163. l. 22. before sufficient strength insert want of p. 190. l. 29. for and r. as p. 241. l. 23. blot out is p. 254. l. 13. for Colledges r. Colledge p. 262. l. 25. for verity r. unity p. 272. l. 29. after sacrifice insert to p. 277. l. 19. after they insert are p. 294. l. 28. for factions r. fictions p. 306 l. 2. for whola r. whole p. 369. l. ult r. sanctions p. 392. l. 27. for the desired r. desired the. p. 410. l. ult for intrigue r. interregnum p. 470. l. 18. for ill-bred r. ill breed p. 491. l. 13. for in r. as p. 494. l. 23. for ferced r. forced p. 529. l. 24. for Photians r. Photinians p. 533. l. 7. for our r. once p. 537. l. 13. for lying r. flying p. 588. l. 4. insert though before they had PART I. SECT I. UPon the Dissolution of the Roman Tyranny under which all Christendom had groan'd for many Ages infinite were the disputes and controversies that were immediately every where raised about the true Constitution of the Ecclesiastical State and Government Some ouâ— of an over-vehement loathing of their late Bondage were out-ragious for its utter Abolition so as to leave every man to his own liberty and folly too to teach and practise what himself pleases in matters of Religion without being accountable to any Superior Ecclesiastical or Civil for any misdemeanours therein Others are as fierce to have all Ecclesiastical Officers though immediately Commission'd by our Saviour for the Government of his Kingdom through all Ages stript of all manner of Authority in the Christian Church and all Government of Religion vested only in the Civil Magistrate Others again were neither for its utter Extirpation nor confining the whole exercise of its Jurisdiction to the Secular Powers but for dividing it into its several Provinces assigning some part of it to the Clergy and some to the Civil State Because Religion being Instituted chiefly for these two great ends viz. The advancement of the present Peace and Welfare of Mankind in this World and their safe Conduct and Passage to the State of Bliss and Happiness in the World to come so far as it relates to the present quiet of humane Society it is but fit and necessary it should be subject to the Authority of the Supreme Powers over them whose proper Duty Trust and Office it is to provide for the settlement and preservation of the Publick Peace And therefore seeing that Religion has a prime and over-ruling influence upon that so as either to establish or disturb it by its good or bad management it concerns them in the first place to encourage such Doctrines and Principles as in their own nature tend to the Peace and Quiet of Government and to root out such false Notions as incline or induce men to any Turbulent and Seditious practices under any pretences or mistakes of Religion And if any such there be or if any such there have been nay if any such there can be it cannot be denyed by the boldest Libertines but that in such cases the Supreme Magistrate must be allowed power to defend himâ—â—lf and his Government against their Errors or Follies by
the force and execution of present Laws and Penalties But then as the Christian Religion aims at the future happiness of the Souls of men its Conduct and Government is left to a peculiar Order of men to whom its Founder has entrusted the care of Souls and for which they are accountable to him alone For seeing the Kingdom that he establisht was altogether different in its Constitution from worldly Empire Seeing he appointed Officers void of all Secular Power to preside over it by virtue of his own immediate Authority And seeing he has engaged a peculiar Providence to be assistant to them in the Government of his Church through all Ages the case is plain to all Men that believe his Institution that all Ecclesiastical Power whatever it is that concerns the welfare of Mens Souls in the World to come is entirely vested in the spiritual Guides and Governors of the Church It being therefore so manifest past all contradiction that in all Christian States there are and must be from the Nature both of Government and Christianity two distinct Powers the only difficulty will be so to determine the Bounds of â—â—ch that they neither interfere in the exercise of their Jurisdiction nor any way incroach upon each others Authority An undertaking that has been often attempted by learned Men but generally with that vehement biass and partiality either way that has made it a Controversie not for truth but interest For it being chiefly managed by Divines and Canonists in behalf of the Church and by Statesmen and Lawyers in behalf of the Common-wealth each Party have not so much endeavour'd to assign the real Bounds of Truth as to propagate their own Empire and Dominion And for this reason is it that the Writers of the Church of Rome so eagerly and universally advance the Ecclesiastical Power the omnipotent Soveraignty of which they settle in the Pope alone as to raise it above the Power of all Sovereign Princes and all the Powers of the Earth Neither are they content to make it Superior to all their Authority but swell it to that exorbitant Greatness till they swallow up all Empire into its Jurisdiction And for this very reason the learned that have generally opposed themselves to these high and wild pretences have as generally run into the other Extreme so as to take all Ecclesiastical Authority not only from his Holiness and his Court but from all Ecclesiastical Officers to whom it was consign'd by our Blessed Saviour to the utter destruction of any such thing as a Christian Church So that in this Partial and in reality Prophane way of managing this great Controversie they contend not about the true and just grounds of each Province but both fight for the possession of the whole In which way of waging War no other event of it can be expected then of that irreconcileable fewd between Hannibal and the great Scipio that either Rome or Carthage must be destroyed and the Empire of one intirely subdued to the Dominion of the other And though some very few have treated of these things with somewhat more temper and moderation so as to acknowledge some kind of Bounds to their respective Jurisdictions yet they scarce ever set and determine them with that Justice and Equality that the security both of Government and Religion requires but apparently warp to their own side as they incline to or depend upon the interest of the Civil or Ecclesiastical State And therefore that is the great and only advantage that I can ensure to my self above those many so very much more learned Men that have labour'd in this weighty Argument that I know my self to undertake it without being engaged by any prejudice or biassed by any Interest or hired by any Reward then purely the discharge of a good Conscience without which the highest pleasure and satisfaction that humane life can afford were not a tolerable thing but with it an ordinary State of life with health is a present Paradice and state of Happiness So that how much soever I come behind others and I am sensible of a very great distance in the advantages of Wit and Learning yet I shall give place to no Man in freedom and integrity of Judgment And that alone I am sure is enough to make me Master of my Argument for if Men would only consider the Nature of the thing it self and abstract it from interest and prejudice that alone would bring them into a right understanding of it But when instead of looking directly upon their Object as they ought they labour to squint and pervert their own Eye-sight it is their own sault that they lose its natural representation And this is the very thing that fills the World with so many disputes to so little purpose because Men in their Enquiries will not follow the guidance of things themselves whereas if they would but be pleased to do so the truth of every thing is as clear and visible to a diligent Enquirer as Light it self There is not any one Argument that is thought more intricate obscure and difficult then this that I am now undertaking and therefore it is for the most part baulkt by the Wise Men of the World as a point too touchy to be handled especially because such great and powerful interests are engaged in the Contest and they are sure to be jealous as they ought to be of their own Prerogatives and will hardly so much as endure to have them touched much less fetter'd and confin'd So that this dispute is not only supposed difficult but dangerous in that it is thought so hard a matter for the Undertaker not to incur some way or other the displeasure of his Superiours by his best and most honest performance And yet after all this wariness and wisdom if Men would but state the thing only as that states it self there is scarce any one Controversie that can be more safe or more easie then its determination For things are so wonderfully order'd by the wise Providence of God in settling Christianity in the World that by determining the power of the Church and State as they are determin'd by his own original Settlement both Parties may have their own utmost demands and particularly the Civil Power more then otherwise it could have demanded And I doubt not but before I have done to give satisfaction to the highest Pretenders either way especially on the side of the State without any invasion of the Churches Power To assign an inherent and independent Power in the Church distinct from that of the State and immediately derived not from the Prince but our Saviour and that I am sure is as much as the highest claims to Ecclesiastical Power can with any modesty or without rank dishonesty challenge But then this being granted I shall demonstrate That there is as full and unabated Supremacy in Sovereign Powers over all manner of Ecclesiastical Authority as if it had been entirely derived from their own special
of breach of honesty by making him invade the Power of the Sword when he had disclaim'd it so this evasion charges him with defect of understanding as if our Saviour had been so weak as to argue Caesar's Title of Propriety from his Inscription Whereas any Man of Common sense if he will not industriously pervert it cannot but understand that our Saviour argues from the known Custom of all Nations in the World to stamp their Coin with their King's Image so that the piece of Money that they shewed him bearing Caesar's Picture that was an Evidence that he was their Sovereign Lord and therefore were they bound to submit to him in all his Commands that were not inconsistent with the Law of God and paying of Tribute not being so it was not only no sin but a necessary Duty or as St. Paul expresses it in pursuance of his Masters Precept exhorting and commanding the Christians to pay Tribute not only for Fear but for Conscience sake and because it is due This Sense is so very plain and unavoidable that nothing but malitious difingenuity could pervert it and the truth of it is this sort of men seem to take a kind of Pride and Delight in insulting ever the Holy Scriptures and make them ridiculous by their own imperious glosses to avoid their force as we shall see as we proceed But at present to give one example for all there are among them that blush not to prove our Saviour's Civil Dominion over the Kings of the Earth from the blessed Virgins Song He hath defeated the Proud in the imagination of their hearts he hath put down the Mighty from their Seat and hath exalted the humble and meek In which words she glorifies the Goodness and Wisdom of God that he was pleased that his Son should be born of a poor despised Maid and not as the great Men of the World expected of them that sate upon the Thrones of the Earth from which humble and grateful piece of Devotion to infer that she rejoyced and triumphed in the Prospect of that Confusion that her Son should bring upon the World by subverting and pulling down all the establisht Governments in it and erecting every where new Kingdoms and Principalities by his own Prerogative 't is so rude an imposing not only on this particular passage but upon the whole Tenor of the Gospel it self and the nature of our Saviours Office as argues a strange height either of Pride or Prophaneness For nothing can be more evident from all the preceding passages and the whole Scope of the Gospel then our Saviour's disclaimour of any pretence to any Temporal Authority And the truth of it is if he had laid claim to any such Power his Religion had stood upon no better Foundation than that of Mahomet that was at first planted and propagated and has hitherto been maintain'd by nothing but the power of the Sword Whereas the Design of our Saviour's Institution was pure and unmixt Religion and therefore abetted it self and its Laws by no other Sanctions then only the rewards and punishments of the life to come And the same Power that he claim'd and exercis'd himself and no other he devolved upon his Apostles from them to descend to their Successors to the end of the World so that all their power whatever it is being derived from him is of the same nature with that which himself whilst on Earth challenged as Head of his Church And yet it is plain that as Head of his Church he was so far from challenging any superiority over the Powers of the World that he profest nothing more frankly than an entire subjection to them And therefore Sovereign Princes cannot be properly said to be vested with any power under our Saviour as such for as it is evident that they are vested with a Supremacy of Power antecedent to his Institution so is it as evident that he never gave them any Commission for the Government of his Kingdom That power was given to his Apostles that were as much subject to the Civil Government as himself had ever been so that as he could give them no Temporal Power because he had or rather would have none it is plain that neither they nor their Successors could pretend to any by vertue of his Commission What he enjoys in Heaven as the Son of God whatever it is is peculiar to himself upon the account of his Divinity but he has communicated no other to his Church on Earth then what himself claim'd whil'st he remain'd in it which was purely spiritual in order to a Future State but void of all Temporal Power and Coercion So that it is but a crude expression not to call it prophane because it is so common by customary mistake to affirm that Kings are Supream Governors under Christ. They are and ever were so under God but so as to be superiour to Christ as Christ is Head of his Church within their Dominions For as Head of his Church he ever own'd himself subject to the Temporal Powers And therefore what absoluteness of power soever he enjoys by vertue of his Divine Nature yet as the Messias or the Mediator of the new Covenant for as such he was man 1 Tim. 2. 5. or as the Head and Founder of the Christian Society he strips both himself and his Officers of all pretences to and advantages of Temporal Power The reason of it we must carry with us all along because it is the Essential thing peculiar to his Institution that it might be able to subsist purely upon its own strength and maintain it self purely by vertue of its own Goodness and that not only without the Assistance but against the utmost Opposition of all Worldly Power And therefore the wise Providence of God so order'd things that it was sent into the World under all disadvantages but only of its own Truth and Goodness And by that alone it prevailed over all the World before it had the least countenance from the Civil Powers nay whilst it was with all their strength zeal and malice opprest by them And this is the only thing that made it pure Religion and distinguisht it from all other Religions in the World whereas had it any certain Temporal advantage annext to it as such men had been invited to embrace it as matter of Interest and not of Conscience and then it had become Worldly Policy and ceased to have been Religion That then is the first Principle upon which our whole Christianity lies that all the Advantages Priviledges and Preheminences that the Church can pretend to derive from our Saviour are purely Spiritual relating only to the State of Souls in the World to come And if the Church any where enjoy any other Dignities or Jurisdictions it derives them wholly from the Grants and Charters of Soveraign Princes who may endow them with what Priviledges themselves think convenient as they may any other Order of their Subjects And what Powers or
Priviledges all States that profess Christianity are bound by that profession to settle upon the Church I shall shew in its proper place but whatever they are the Church cannot challenge them by it's Original Charter So that if any Church shall be so presumptuous as to pretend to any such Power which way soever it comes in whether directly or indirectly by vertue of our Saviour's Commission that is not only a Contradiction to the Nature of Christianity but an Atheistical Abuse put upon the whole Design of the Institution But as to pretend to any such Power from our Saviour only over Subjects is no less then Blasphemy against him so to pretend to it over Soveraigns doubles the Blasphemy by adding the Sin of Rebellion to that of Impiety and utterly destroys not only the Being and Constitution of a Christian Church but of all humane Societies So that how many Marks soever there may be of a true Church this alone is an infallible Note of a false one And therefore every Church that refuses to disclaim any Temporal Power over Princes renounces the Christian Faith and forfeits all the Rights and Priviledges of a Christian Church but if it should be so vain as openly to claim any such power it bids open defiance to our Saviour and quits him and his Religion to follow Mahomet So that there is no one thing in the World can so effectually unchurch a Church as its claiming any Temporal Authority to it self especially over Soveraign Powers And this I doubt will light very severely upon the Bishops of Rome ever since the Hildebrandine Apostacy viz. That the Pope as Vicar of Christ has a power of deposing Soveraign Princes and absolving Subjects from their Allegiance this they have own'd whenever they durst and put in practice whenever they could and would never be brought upon any Terms to condemn it which Doctrine certainly is the greatest unkindness that they can do themselves and the worst thing that their greatest Enemies could desire to object against them and if any thing can prove his Holiness to be Antichrist this is the thing because it is an utter Subversion of the whole State of Christianity and makes our Saviour a false Christ by making him a Temporal Messias and placing him in the head of an Army to subdue the Princes and Nations of the World into subjection to himself I am sure for this very reason does the Learned Cardinal Baronius make Mahomet the Type of Antichrist because he promoted his Religion over several parts of the World by force of Arms Quod armorum potentia tot provincias nullo fermè negotio per suos posteros ejusdem sectae homines subjugasset He would have done well to have applyed this Censure nearer home and then he would not have justified all the Rebellious Popes in their violencies and outrages that they acted against Soveraign Princes and yet no man has done it with more diligence then himself as I shall prove when I come to consider his Performance Neither will this Charge of Apostacy light only upon the Church of Rome but upon every Church that maintains a right of resistance to Soveraign Powers upon a pretence of Christian Religion whatsoever for that is still to take to themselves such a power against their Prince by our Saviours Authority which is the same direct contradiction to the Nature of the Christian Faith and the same sort of Apostacy from Christianity to Mahumetism putting a Scymeter into our Saviours hand and under his pretended conduct waging War against their lawful Soveraign and that is the greatest dishonour that they can bring to their Master or themselves And yet we shall find some other Churches aś much guilty of this Apostacy both in Doctrine and Practice as that of Rome and though Rome and they stand at the greatest distance of Enmity out of Jealousie of one another who should carry the prize yet they both fully agree in this fundamental Antichristian Principle But this Charge will come home in its proper place at present we must take this Article of faith all along with us No Temporal Authority in the Church unless from the grant of the State §. III. But then secondly it must be granted too that the Power of Princes how great soever in Church matters supposes the Spiritual Authority of the Church that was as much settled by our Saviour without any dependency on the Authority of the State as the Authority of the State was settled by the Providence of God before there was any such thing as a Christian Church in the World So that it is undeniably evident from its original Constitution that the Church subsists no more upon the State as to its proper Power then the State upon the Church For as the Christian Church came into the World after the Civil Government of States was entirely settled in it so did the World come into the Church after its Government was as entirely fixed within it self And therefore as Christianity by its coming into the World ought no manner of way to abate the Civil Power of the State so neither when the Powers of the World come into the Church ought they to diminish any thing of that Authority that it enjoyed by Divine Commission before they came into it For they are received into it upon the same terms with all other Proselytes of the Christian Faith that they submit themselves to it as our Soviour's own Institution So that as our first point is That all Sovereign Princes have or ought to have an Imperial Supremacy over all Ecclesiastical Persons and in all Ecclesiastical Causes Our second is That this Supremacy which is the highest Power that can be on Earth is no Ecclesiastical but a Civil Supremacy For beside that it would be a dishonour to degrade a Sovereign Prince to the Priestly Office The Ecclesiastical Power is purely Spiritual and that is a Power that was never challenged by any Prince nor directly given by any Man though it is so by plain and undeniable consequence by all that disown an Inherent Authority in the Church from our Saviour's own Commission but only Mr. Hobbs who as he made the Prince his own Priest made him his own God too Now these two Principles laid together clear up the Nature and Title of the Supremacy of Sovereign Princes That it is none of that Spiritual Power that is lodged in the Church but a Temporal Supremacy over all the Spiritual Power of it within his own Dominions And now if these two Principles that are as certain as Christianity it self were but calmly attended to they would perfectly silence all the clamours of both the extreme Parties in this Controversie Those of the Church of Rome must cease their noise that we make the King a Bishop by acknowledging his Supremacy in all Ecclesiastical Causes and over all Ecclesiastical Persons when upon this State of the Question such a Supremacy over all things and persons within their Dominions
is inseparable from all Sovereign Power and Christianity and all the Power that it brings along with it comes into the World upon its supposition So that by it we are so far from making the King a Priest that without it we cannot own him to be our King And on the other side when we assert a Spiritual Power to the Church distinct from though subject to the King's Supremacy others cry out Popery Praemunires and I know not what hard names they would soon let fall their out-cry if they would consider that it is such a Power as never any Prince exercised or wittingly challenged though it is possible that some may have run upon it by mistake and is neither Temporal nor Foreign Jurisdiction And in those two points lies the malignity of the pretended Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome for as it is Temporal it plainly subjects the Regal Authority to its Empire and as it is Foreign it makes the whole Kingdom Feudatory and brings us into the form of a Province under an Italian Prince both which are such abuses of Government as evidently subvert it Nay farther as a Foreign Temporal Jurisdiction is inconsistent with the English Monarchy so is all kind of Foreign Jurisdiction though meerly Spiritual irreconcileable with the Prerogative Royal. The reason and the account whereof I shall give in its proper place when I come to state that easie but yet undiscover'd Point of the Divine Authority of National Churches All that I am obliged to at present is to shew the difference between that Authority that we assign to the Church of England and that which the Bishop of Rome would Usurp against which though there were nothing else to be objected but its being Foreign for that reason alone it ought to be banisht the Nation as an Enemy to the Civil Government Whereas the Authority of the Church of England is seated in the King 's own Subjects who can call them to an account for it if they use it to his own or his Subjects prejudice and can as well punish them for any disorders in the abusive Exercise of it as he can any of his own Officers for their misdemeanors in their trust in the Common-wealth So that so far is the King's Supremacy as it is stated in the Church of England from entrenching upon the proper Power of the Church as the Romanists cavil that it only protects it in the due exercise of its Jurisdiction And so far is the proper power of the Church from disclaiming or abating any thing of the King's Supremacy as the other Factions clamour that it first Establishes that upon the most lasting Foundations of Divine Institution before it makes any claim to its own Power and when it does it does it upon no other Terms then of entire submission to its Supreme Authority And now that Man must wilfully dream that can imagine such a power as this in the Church can be any way prejudicial to or detractive from the Civil Government and yet that such a Power there is is an assertion worth no less then our Christianity it self that stands or falls with it For if our Saviour have not entrusted his Church with a Power within it self sufficient to maintain it self by vertue of his own Authority then it stands upon no stronger Foundation then the Will of the Sovereign Power And then as that can Establish so it can Abrogate its whole Obligation which is plainly to say that it is no True Religion for it is certainly none if it relye only upon humane Authority So that all that can be concluded in this case is that upon supposition that our Christian Faith is an Imposture there can be no Power in the Christian Church and that for a very good reason because then the Church can be no Church But upon supposition that our Saviour founded it by Divine Authority the peculiar Power of the Church derived meerly and immediately from himself without any interposition of humane Authority is the first thing to be believed as absolutely necessary to its Being and Subsistence But this will appear with a brighter evidence if we consider the several branches of Jurisdiction that as they are complicated with the supposition of Christianity so are they such acts of Power as no Sovereign Power ever challenged or can with any decency exercise As the Power of Preaching the Gospel through all Nations of the World in the Name and by the Authority of God The Power of granting or with-holding the Instruments of Grace the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist The Power of the Keys or judging who are fit to be admitted into the Society of the Christian Church and who ought to be cast out of it for non-performance of the Conditions undertaken at their Admittance The Power of instructing the People in the Duties of Religion or guiding and directing them in the safest way to Salvation The Power of Ordaining Consecrating and Constituting Ecclesiastical Officers to succeed in the Government of the Church through all Ages These are the several points of their Commission and are granted to be so by Mr. Hobbs himself and that at the very time when he undertakes to demonstrate that all these acts of Power are no acts of Authority And that is one of his choisest methods of Demonstration in all things to bear down the undenyable Truth of all things by meer force of Assertion thus here he reckons up the chief Acts of Authority in the Apostle's Commission and then will bear us down that they are no Acts of Authority only by saying so and that against the Common Sense of Mankind For if they had a Commission from our Saviour to do these things then were they Empowred and Authorised by their Commission to do them So absurd a thing is it to talk of acting by Commission without acting by Power whereas every Commission as such is granting so much Power And therefore if the Apostles and their Successors were Commissioned by our Saviour to these several Acts of their Office as he grants because it cannot be denyed every Act is an effect of that Power that is settled upon them by virtue of their Commission And is it not strange that this witty Gentleman should begin all this Extravagant discourse against all Power Ecclesiastical as such with this very Assertion That the Power Ecclesiastical was at first in the Apostles and after them in such as received it from the Apostles by successive laying on of hands What thickness of Contradiction is this A Power Ecclesiastical and yet no Power at all Why then if it be no Power it is no Power Ecclesiastical and if it be a Power Ecclesiastical then it is some Power And then again a Power by virtue of our Saviour's Commission i. e. a Power warranted by Divine Authority and to say that this is no Power is plainly to averâ— That there is no such thing as Divine Authority And upon this supposition that
lies at the bottom of all this witty Authors folly and Philosophy it must be confessed that there can be no Ecclesiastical Power over the Christian Church either in the Clergy or any Man else because upon it there is neither Christian Church nor Christian Religion and then it is certain that there can be no Power over nothing So vain are all the Attempts against that Authority that our Blessed Saviour has granted to the Apostolical Succession that it cannot be removed by any other Principles then what directly overthrow Christianity it self upon those Terms it must be parted with but upon no other And though Mr. Hobbs speaks out more boldly then his Neighbours yet all the followers of Erastus and all that will own â— certain Form of Government establisht in the Church by Divine Right cannot avoid the Church of Leviathan And therefore to proceed with him as Fore-man to speak for all the rest it is evident that beside the Authority by which the Apostles and their Successors act every act that they are enabled to by their Commission is in its own Nature and as such an Authoritative Act. First such is the power of Preaching and Teaching i. e. the power of publishing the Laws of the Gospel to all Nations and requiring all Mens Obedience to them under the sanction of the greatest Rewards and Penalties And if Mr. Hobbs can affirm that exacting Obedience upon such terms be no piece of Authority it is in vain either to reason with himself or any other Man of his Kidney or Understanding But he proves it to be so because The Apostles were Preachers and Preachers are Cryers and Cryers have no right to Command Among the many bad qualities in this Author's way of writing his contempt of other Mens understandings is none of the least for if he had not a very low Opinion of their intellectual Abilities he could never have presumed to impose upon them by such childish pretences And the truth of it is he talks not as if he discoursed to Men but to Magpies Parots and Jackdaws that are to learn to chatter his Dictates by Rote For is it not a strange grossness of Confidence that when our Blessed Saviour came from God to publish a new Law to the World and enforce it with the severest Penalties and when he gave the same Commission to his Apostles that himself had received from his Father to publish this Law to the World though they do it with all this Authority to infer that they do it with none at all because when they declare their Message they open their mouths as Cryers do when they make Proclamations and so the original Word signifies any kind of publick Declaration And what if it were the proper term for the Cryers Office it may for all that in common Speech be applyed to any other way of Publication it will be hard to find out any one word in the World so severely stinted to its original Import However every School-boy could have inform'd the old Philosopher that this word is not so confin'd and that it is not is evident from the very passage it self because the Apostles that are said to Proclaim or Cry the Gospel to all Nations do not make a simple Proclamation but require Obedience to what they publish under the most forcible obligation of Rewards and Punishments And such Proclamation as that whatever the term Proclaiming may signifie in its naked sense brings with it as much Authority as it is possible for Government to put in practice But he farther affirms in proof of no Authority in the Church That the Apostles and other Ministers of the Gospel are our School-Masters and not our Commanders But beside that this is an Arbitrary Assertion of his own devising to assign them the Office of School-Masters for the Scripture no where does so The Authority of a School-Master is some Authority for though he have not the Power of the Sword he has that of the Rod and that is as effectual for his purpose among Boys as the other among Men. So that there is no Logique in the Argument neither can I believe so witty a Man to have been so weak as to have brought it for that purpose but rather because he thought the comparison was a witty slur upon Christianity as if it were as childish and contemptible an Office to instruct men in it as it is to teach Boys and Children their Elements of Speech That is a shrewd hint though the next comparison is much more poinant That our Saviour compares Preaching to Fishing i. e. to winning Men to Obedience not by coertion and punishing but by perswasion and therefore our Saviour calls not Apostles hunters of Men but fishers of Men. Now though his endeavour to prove that there is no Authority in the Officers of the Church because they have no Civil Authority is altogether vain and trifling because he only presumes what no Man will grant him that there is no other Authority in the World yet here his way of demonstration is somewhat more then usually pleasant viz. That they were endued with no power of Coertion because our Saviour has constituted them not his Huntsmen but his Fishermen Where I think it would require the Acuteness of Mr. Hobbs's wit to make it out why there is less Coertion in Fishing then in Hunting especially in Net-fishing which was their former Trade to which he knows our Saviour there alludes when this mighty difficulty is cleared up I may come to understand the force of the Argument but till then I must confess it is above my reach But hitherto it is evident that notwithstanding all this Gentleman 's Grammatical Demonstrations from Cryers School-Masters and Fishers that the Commission granted to the Apostles and their Successors to preach the Gospel did not only carry proper Authority in it but the highest sort of Authority because enforced with the greatest Rewards and Penalties and that every man knows is the very Life and Soul of all Power The next branch of their Commission is to Baptize in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost and though the Philosopher would here make himself merry not only with the Sacrament but with the Holy Trinity in whose Name it is Administred yet after all his pains to prove it no Authority he fairly confesses That it is an Authority either to Baptize or refuse to Baptize because Baptism is the Sacrament of Allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God But certainly if they have Power to grant or deny them this Sacrament i. e. to receive them into the Kingdom of God or shut them out of it if there be any such thing as Power in the World there cannot be a greater then this And consequent to this Authority he says is the Remission and Retention of Sins or the Power of Loosing and Binding and for this I must confess he gives a pertinent reason for so he is
of enquiry which though a fault is by no means so disingenuous as acting against knowledge But as for this Case of Apostates in time of Persecution upon whom Mr. Hobbs says Excommunication could have no effect of Terrour If indeed the Providence of God had not given them sufficient evidence of their Faith I will grant it to be true not only of that but of all the other Threatnings of the Gospel But if God have given sufficient motives of belief as if the Gospel be not a cheat he has if it be all Mr. Hobbs's dispute is without bottom a Man's Apostacy is no Fence against the Reflections of his own Conscience For though it is in his Power to deny his Faith for fear of Persecution yet it is not in his Power to disbelieve it So that upon such a Man the Sentence of Excommunication by which he is cast out of the Kingdom of Heaven lights with as much Terrour as upon any other Believer And there is nothing more evident in the History of the Primitive Church then the Efficacy of this Sentence upon such Offenders For the greatest part of those that fell in time of Persecution were by this means alone recover'd to the Church brought to sue for pardon and undergo very severe Penances as a satisfaction for the Scandal But to what purpose do I put my self to the trouble to prove these things when all Mr. Hobbs's discourse upon this Argument runs upon this supposition as if Christianity were but a trivial and indifferent thing that might or might not be believed as Men variously fancied or were casually inclined And upon that supposition I will freely grant it to be of as little effect as he would have it But if the Providence of God hath given us such a Demonstrative Evidence of the Divine Authority of this Religion that no Man who inquires into it can wink against its Light without doing violence to his own Convictions then whether Men will or no it will be a perpetual Terrour to their Consciences And that this slight Opinion of the Evidence of Christianity though upon what slight and indeed ignorant pretences I have elsewhere shewn is the bottom of Mr. Hobbs's meaning is too manifest from his next branch of the Supremacy of Sovereign Powers which indeed is neither better nor worse then bare-faced Blasphemy And that is the Power of making Scripture Law i. e. Obligatory But if that be the state of the Christian Religion that it is not at all material whether a Man regard it or not for any Obligation or Authority in it self Mr. Hobbs is not to be blamed unless in point of Prudence for all those irreverend abuses that he has been pleased to put upon it But if it be made Law by the Command of God as it is if it be not all imposture in pretending falsly to his Authority then whatever the Sovereign is pleased to make of it Mr. Hobbs and all his Followers that will allow it no obligation but from Man stand Convicted of the most manifest Treason and Blasphemy against the Sovereign Lord of all and this part of Ecclesiastical Supremacy of making Scripture Law that they give to Kings they take away from God himself After all this rank prophaneness it is almost needless to consider his last branch of Ecclesiastical Power viz. the Right of Ordaining and Constituting Ecclesiastical Officers not only because it is of the same Nature and derived from the same Divine Authority with all the other particulars of the Apostolical Commission but because himself grants it in general by placing it in the People For if it be any where that is enough against himself that denies all manner of Power in the Church but most of all because he has confessed and no Man can deny it the whole truth of the matter both against the Hobbist and the Independant too viz. That the Apostles conveighed their Authority to their Successors whom themselves Deputed and Ordained by Imposition of hands and if so this Power of constituting Successors resided in them alone because no Man could be constituted an Officer in the Church but by their Imposition of hands or those to whom by it they Transmitted their Power So that whatever interest they might permit the People in their Choice or Nomination of their Officers the whole power of Constituting them in their Office and Authority lay in themselves alone §. IV. But Mr. Hobbs having hitherto treated of the Power Ecclesiastical as it stood before the Conversion of Kings and Men endued with Sovereign Civil Power and after his rate of Demonstration proved it to be no Power at all whilst vested in the Pastors of the Church he comes now to prove that it is lodged in Civil Sovereigns upon their Conversion to the Christian Faith and that when it comes to them it becomes true and proper Power But before I consider his small Arguments I cannot understand why that which was no Power before becomes Power now There can be but one reason for it and that is too obvious in all Mr. Hobbs's Writings viz. Because it is now abetted with the Penalties of this life whereas before it was only abetted with the Penalties of the life to come so that the plain English of the Assertion if spoken out is this that there are no penalties at all but in this life and then I must confess that the power of the Church can be no Power till complicated with the Civil Power But the man that discourses upon such Principles as these has nothing to do with the Christian Religion or any thing relating to it But secondly Which way came this Power into Civil Sovereigns Our Saviour left it to his Apostles and they delivered it down by Imposition of Hands to others who were to conveigh it in the same manner of Succession through all Ages how then came Civil Sovereigns by it If any were Ordain'd to it they had it by virtue of their Ordination not their Right of Sovereignty if they were not which way could they become possessed of a Power that was never derived to them in the way of Ordination which is the only way in which it can be conveighed and therefore if they have it not that way they can never have it any other As for the Principle upon which he founds this Power of the Civil Sovereign though it be true in it self yet it is no proper reason for what he would infer from it viz. That the Right of judging what Doctrines are fit for Peace and to be taught the Subjects is in all Common-wealths inseparably annexed to the Sovereign Power Civil This is undoubtedly true that they are the proper Judges of what conduces to the peace and quiet of Government but then this Power is common to Heathen as well as Christian Soveraigns they are all equally concern'd and obliged to take care of the Publick Peace so that this Power does not accrue to the Civil Sovereign by his becoming
Christian Religion they could have no ground or provocation to persecute it because it was not only by its Laws but by its very Constitution in the first place tender of all the Rights of Civil Government but if notwithstanding that they were resolved to proceed against them they had nothing more to say or do for themselves then to lay down their Lives with all possible meekness in submission to their Royal Will and Pleasure and hoped they would not take it for any piece of stubbornness or affected disobedience that they would not Renounce their Faith nor quit their hopes in the Kingdom of Heaven out of compliance with their Commands when they saw them so much in good earnest as to be ready to lay down their Lives out of pure submission to their Authority Such a competition as this cannot be avoided upon the supposition of the real Truth of Christianity but then upon supposition of its Nature it is impossible that it can be any way prejudicial to Civil Government to which by its obligation to peaceable suffering under it it cannot avoid to discharge its whole duty of subjection to it If it be said that though this is the real state of Christianity in it self it cannot be expected that its Professors should be so perfect and so free from passion but that they may be provoked to resistance by Oppression To this it is easily answered that how much soever the Christian Religion allows for other infirmities of Flesh and Blood this is open defiance and contradiction to it so that the Man that pretends to Christianity and yet can be prevail'd upon by any Temptation to entertain one thought of it is a Villain a Cut-throat a Traytor and a Rebel not only against his King but his Saviour And therefore whenever Princes are encountred with any pretences whatsoever of disturbance upon the account of Religion for that very reason alone they ought to cut them off as the most incorrigible and most unpardonable sort of Traytors And if they are Christians themselves and have any kindness for the honour of their Religion to make such shameless pretenders to it the Examples of their utmost severity it is the very top of all Blasphemy as well as Rebellion In short there can be nothing more evident then this that Christianity it self as it is founded upon the Doctrine of the Cross can never do any harm to Civil Government so if it be ever abused and prophaned to such designs they that do it are the worst of Villains that deserve the utmost punishment that can be inflicted upon them in this life and will be sure to meet with it in the life to come And that I think is all that it is possible for any Law to do to deterr those that it would oblige from offending against it by all the Penalties that God or Man can inflict §. VI. But secondly beside this general Doctrine of the Cross that cuts up the very Roots of all resistance to Lawful Powers there are great numbers of particular Laws peculiar to this Religion that lop off all its Branches and Pretences by advancing the Reverence that is due to Authority and requiring from all that profess any Obedience to that a more accurate Obedience and Subjection to their Governors then their Governors could have obliged them to by their own Authority So that of all Men the Christian must be the best Subject by his very profession so far is he from being brought under any probable Temptation of disrespect to his Superiours by his Christianity that by that be his Governours what they will Caligula's Nero's or Domitian's he is bound by a new obligation under no less penalty than the Divine displeasure to give them the highest honour and the lowest subjection It were an endless work to enumerate all passages in the Holy Scripture to this purpose it being more frequently and more earnestly urged then any other duty because as Mr. B. very well observes in his Book of the Lawfulness of Rebellion Every Man is naturally selfish and proud and apt to break the bounds that God hath set us and to be Kings and Laws to our selves This Rebelling disobedient disposition therefore should be first resisted and subdued as a greater Enemy to the Peace of Nations then the faults of Princes are And therefore I shall alledge one or two of the most pregnant Texts against it to shew both the Impudence and Impiety of those Men and himself in particular who dare Reconcile any Pretence to Christianity with the least disrespect to Sovereign Powers And whilst they lay claims to greater Holiness and Purity then their Neighbours are putting continual slights and affronts upon their Governours and whenever they can gain an opportunity by the assistance of the Rabble blush not with all their demureness to wrastle with them for their Supremacy Which is such a rank piece of Blasphemy such a bare-faced appearance of Antichrist Mahomet and Hildebrand as no good Christian can sufficiently abhor nor any wise Magistrate sufficiently punish Though the greatest affront of all is to the Holy Scriptures themselves for when they have so clearly and severely forbidden all Resistance to Supreme Powers when the Rules that they have given in this case are so absolute and universal to prevent all Evasion when beside the great Authority of the Command it self they enforce it by its own wisdom and reasonableness in a word when it is tyed upon us by all the strongest Obligations both of Power Interest and Ingenuity after all this to escape the force of a Law so carefully Enacted is to pass an open slight upon the Wisdom of the Legislator himself But to make these very Precepts that were given on purpose to cut off all pretences of Resistance so many Warrants and Commissions given to Subjects for raising Rebellion against their Sovereigns as has been done in our Age exceeds all the Impiety of Men nay of Devils too in all former Ages For what can be more clearly and fully express'd then St. Paul's Discourse to the Romans chap. 13 Let every Soul be subject to the higher Powers for there is no Power but of God The Powers that now are are ordain'd of God Whosoever therefore resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves Damnation c. Here is no Restriction no Reservation 't is the Catholique Duty of all Mankind and stands upon such reasons as equally effect all And first from the Original of all Authority It is from God It is not said because those in Power were either the best or the wisest Men but be the Men what they will they have their Authority from God himself and for that reason he requires subjection to them as to himself and therefore looks upon all resistance to these his Vicegerents as an affront to the Authority of his own Commission Whosoever resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God And then no
a publick Crime then a publick Repentance And therefore I hope to see Mr. B. before he go hence to make good his promise of making his publick Recantation and remove that scandal that he has given to the Church of God by so foul a Mistake as he calls it and I hope it was no worse Though I fear when this is done he may find new matter of Repentance for slandering and traducing the whole Church of God and for that end perverting and false representing all its Records as he has done in some late Books especially his Treatise of Episcopacy and his History of the Councils that are so full not only of falsification but rank malice against all the Ancient Governours of the Christian Church against whom he could have no other ground of quarrel then only this that they were Bishops that it is such a manifest disclaiming of all Truth and Integrity as no pride or passion can excuse and those two great faults are the only Pleas that can be made to extenuate the rankness of his malice But here are such numberless heaps of meer falshoods and spiteful insinuations as could proceed from nothing better then wilful dishonesty unless this may be pleaded in his behalf viz. his gross ignorance of the things that he writes of and that in good earnest is the best and truest Apology for him for it is evident from his crude way of writing that none but a very Novice in Antiquity and an utter stranger to the true Records of the Church could ever have betrayed himself to so unlearned a Performance There is not any one Story in which he has not committed gross mistakes and such as discover themselves to proceed from nothing but his unacquaintedness with the Primitive Records And any one that can but Translate any of the Modern Collections of the Ancient Councils without looking into the Original Acts and Histories without which no Man can arrive to any competent knowledge in this learning may make just such another Church-Historian as R. B. And therefore I would advise him instead of boasting himself Father of Fourscore Books and upwards to have some patience and take some pains to write one well-weighed well-digested and wellreviewed before he publish it And if his heat could but be prevail'd with to submit to so much tameness one such discourse would outweigh not only Fourscore but four hundred Books of Crudities I have insisted thus long upon this Apostolical Precept because it is the most effectual Bulwark against Rebellion and therefore most abused by the Hildebrandinists who would elude its Obligation by the several fore-mentioned shifts to evacuate the Sense of the Law it self But now to proceed with the Doctrine of St. Paul agreeable is that of the other great Apostle St. Peter 1 Epist. Chap. 2. from vers 13th to 25th Where the same duty is laid down fully in the same express and comprehensive Terms and with the same regard of duty to God it must be done For the Lord's sake and that is the biggest thing that can be said in this or any other Case that Almighty God requires it forever and as Men will own his own Authority as an indispensable Duty and this for all the same reasons alledged by the other Apostle and some more Not only because their Authority is from God and because the Institution it self is for the general Good of Mankind and because the great Governour of the World commands Subjection to them as his Vice-Roys under the severest Penalties both here and hereafter but beside all this it is made necessary because it is for the honour of their Religion that by a meek and peaceable submission to the most unjust sufferings after their great Master's Example they should prevent and silence those Calumnies of his and their Enemies as if they were disturbers of Government so that if they did not submit with all meekness and patience to their Superiors of what rank soever down from Kings to Masters of Families whether good or bad it would have been a just scandal to their Religion But to this Mr. Rutherford very gravely and seriously replies That patient suffering and violent resisting are not incompatible That is to say that a Man may Resist in his own defence but if he have the ill-fortune to be overcome he must then suffer patiently This Patience per force I see is the right Presbyterian Subjection when their Superiours are too strong for them they will crouch only because they must But as long as they are able Princes must pardon them if they defend themselves by force of Arms though if they cannot they will be so civil as to lay them down And of the same kind is the Submission of Servants to harsh and cruel Masters when they are beaten to defend themselves with the next Cudgel that they can seize on but if the Master prove the more able Fencer then the Servant when he has lost his defensive Weapon has no remedy left but to lye down and suffer himself to be beaten patiently and this Patience of a Turkish Slave is their only true Christian Subjection though as the Proverb goes It is a Vertue more suited to the Philosophy of an Horse then the Religion of a Man And if this be all that is injoin'd by the Apostle it is nothing at all for when we are commanded to suffer patiently or not to resist only when we cannot help our selves it is a very needless command because so we must do whether we will or no and Patience per force is no Patience at all But beside this dull shift we have a more acute Evasion to elude the Text That these words were not address'd to Subjects that had the rights of their own Country but to Strangers residing and inhabiting in such places where they could challenge no greater rights then meerly of Courtesie and Civility But though this is not so dull as the Scotch resistance to yield when we can fight no longer it is but another way of fooling against the express Sense of the Words themselves For to say nothing of the distinction between Native Subjects and Strangers between whom there can be no difference as to this Duty then that it is stricter upon the natural Subject then the Foreigner St. Peter's reason as it makes no difference in the Point so it admits none because it is universal and unlimited viz. from the peremptory Command of God that requires submission to Kings and all their Subordinate Officers and upon this reason it concerns all alike And after that to let Subjects loose from the duty of Non-resistance to their Prince because the Law was here particularly directed to such as were Aliens though built upon and enforced by a reason common to all Men shews if not the prophaneness of the Men the badness of their Cause Though after all the Observation is as false as 't is trifling when it is so vulgarly known that the dispersed Jews were
for the most part made Denisons of those Cities where they inhabited and there were very few that were not as well as St. Paul free of some City or other And then these Jews or most of them to whom this Epistle was written were as proper Subjects to the Government under which they lived as if they had been Natives of the Province Certainly Men must be arrived to a very slight regard towards their own Consciences that dare shuffle away the Obligation of such severe and Sacred Laws of God himself with so much violence to their own Understandings For it was impossible that Men of Common Sense much less of Learning and Acuteness could satisfie themselves with such trifling pretences But so it ever was and so it ever will be that as certain as Religion is at the top of all Rebellion Atheism and Prophaneness is at the Bottom §. VII But to what purpose do I take all this pains to prove the Duty of Non-resistance from the Laws of God the Obligations of Conscience and the Nature of Christianity when that only convinces the Hildebrandists of their Impiety and Apostacy from the Christian Faith For what care they for that Religion is the least of their thought or concernment and though they make it the flourish to all their pretences it is not for any kindness to that but only to amuse the Common People and dazle them as Men catch Larks with Looking-Glasses into their Party both against themselves and their Governours And it is evident that the Patriots and Ring-leaders of Faction have no other measures of Conscience in the Case then only interest reason of State and the good of the Common-wealth And here they applaud and admire themselves with one busie and plausible pretence that this Doctrine of absolute Submission proceeds from a natural dulness and want of that Sense that all Men of wit and courage ought to have of their Native Liberty and serves no End but only the encouragement of Tyranny inviting Princes that are of themselves ill-inclin'd to insult over our Tameness and how much soever they trample upon us and our Liberties they know we must not only endure all but like Spaniels resent it well Now though a wise Man would not refuse Subjection to a good natur'd or a generous Prince yet what Man of any Spirit can with any patience see a whole Kingdom enslaved to the insolence or the folly or the luxury of one Man That say they is not to submit to Government for that always takes care of the Publick Good but instead of that it betrays the Common-wealth to Tyranny and Arbitrary Oppression Now to give the utmost that these Pretenders to Politicks and Innovation can alledge not only to justifie but to admire themselves and the wisdom of their Proceedings I will freely grant that it may and often does fall out that Princes may be weak or wicked or negligent unskilful and unfaithful in their Government that they may injure Multitudes of Private Persons and neglect the Publick that their Follies and Vices may endanger a whole Nation and that the case is somewhat hard that all the good People in it must be bound in Duty and Conscience to assist and uphold that Power with Lives and Fortunes that is nothing but Load and Oppression This indeed is an hard case and an inconvenience that must sometimes though but rarely be felt by being under Government But alas there are many more hard cases in the World and much heavier inconveniences if we cast it off So that setting aside all regard to Duty and consulting only Interest and though we care not to be honest yet if we will be but a little wise and take a true account of our own quiet and security let these shrewd Men of Politicks only consider whether it will not be more easie to bear this heavy Burthen then to cast it off with Violence to the Government and whether by removing one present inconvenience we do not run our selves into more greater and more lasting That is the only point of Wisdom and Politiques in this case whether submission to the worst Government be not more easie to the Subject then War and Rebellion And this I think will be evident to any Man of Common Sence if we only consider what we lose and what we gain by it First we lose our own safety and all that we gain is that loss For all Government is the first security of every Man 's private Interest against the Injuries and Violences of all other Men and that will make it highly useful and beneficial at all times though never so ill administred For were it not for fear of Authority every Man would be exposed a Prey to all Men and all Mankind would unavoidably fall into a State of War then which State nothing can be more defenceless and deplorable and yet nothing but Government preserves us from it So that when we shake off our Duty and Submission to that we put our selves and our Families out of all security against the Violence of all the World beside And therefore it was both a wise and a witty custom that Sextus Empiricus reports to have been among the old Persians that the People upon the death of any of their Kings were allowed five days Anarchy that by the Mischiefs Slaughters Rapines Oâ—â—rages committed in that short Interval they might be convinced of the Usefulness and Necessity of Government and set the greater esteem upon the succeeding Prince And if Men would but consider the great Usefulness of the worst Government that it is a defence and protection of their own private Interests against the Invasions of wicked Men that would soon prevail with them to bear all the inconveniencies of a bad Government rather then blow up themselves and Fortunes together with it For whosoever resists the Government does what in him lies to destroy it and when that is done he has not only endanger'd but certainly lost his own security So great a gainer is every Subject that will take upon him to reform the Government by force that he pulls up the very Fence by which his own Inclosure and Propriety is secured Nay though himself may be so wise as to sit down patiently under an oppressive Government yet if he do but encourage this Doctrine of the Lawfulness of resistance to Princes he exposes himself as well as the Government to all the Assualts of Usurpers For if it be Lawful for other Subjects though they think it not wise for themselves to take up Arms against the Prince his Authority is thereby made too weak and ineffectual to be their Protection they are exposed to the dangers of War and lye wholly at last at the mercy of a Conquering Army and that is the Result of all the Pleas for Resistance upon any pretence whatsoever that they all conclude in Anarchy and Confusion And if we will but take the Experience of our own or other Ages the case
prosecute more largely when I come to shew the Grounds and Reasons upon which this Duty of Universal Subjection is founded and these I shall demonstrate from the Use the Nature and the Original of Government that cannot subsist but upon its supposition And then I shall take an account of all the republican and antimonarchical Principles and shew that all their Hypotheses concerning Government first contrived by the Common-wealths-men of Greece stand upon no firmer bottom than meer fable and poetry and in particular that their fundamental Principle of deriving all Government from the People is built upon no wiser supposition then this That the World was once peopled with Men and Women that sprung out of the Earth both without a Creatour and without Parents And then in the last place shew that the Hildebrandinists of all Sects Bellarmine Suarez Mariana Lessius Becanus Boucherius and others on the Papal side Buchanan Junius Brutus Rutherford Mr. B. and other of the Presbyterian side all agree in this one Principle of deriving the Government from the People and make it the last pretence of all their pleas for resistance upon what account soever In the mean time I proceed upon the Authority of the Scriptures §. 8. That is the second advantage that the Christian Religion brings along with it for the security of Civil Government viz. the many Laws that it has injoyn'd to bind Subjects to an entire and absolute subjection The third is this That those that are entrusted with highest Authority in the Church are most severely forbidden to challenge to themselves any temporal power or dominion and strictly commanded to exercise their own jurisdiction with all manner of meekness and humility towards their Inferiours and an exemplary submission to their Superiours And this is a new Tye upon them beside all the former obligations from the nature of Christianity the doctrine of the Cross the Precepts of our Saviour and his Apostles in common to them with all other Christians to an entire and unreserved subjection Thus when our Saviour had constituted the Apostles supreme Governours in his Church he beats them all off from all Thoughts of worldly pride and ambition and instructs them to exercise their Power though it were so very great with that complyance and condescention as if they had in reality none at all For all our Saviour's Precepts to his Apostles to avoid domination relate wholly to the manner of exercising their Authority and not to the Authority it self as the Enemies to the Christian Church would force them to imply For that the Apostles were vested with true and proper Power is evident both from their Office all the Acts whereof we have shewn to be Authoritative and from our Saviour's own immediate Grant in which he expressly declares That he leaves to them and their Successours the same Power that himself had received from his Father So that if he had any real Authority at all so had they too and if they had none neither had he And therefore those several Texts that are usually alledged to take away the Power of the Church cannot be understood of any thing but the manner of its exercise without any pride or haughtiness and with all manner of gentleness and condescention to those that were under their Authority And if we take an Account of the particular passages themselves they will force us to take them in this sense and no other Thus when they were contending among themselves our Saviour calls them to him and tells them The Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and they that are great exercise Authority upon them but it shall not be so among you But whosoever will be great among you let him be your Minister and whosoever will be chief or Ruler among you let him be your Servant even as the Son of man came not to be ministred unto but to minister Which words though they are alledged by Grotius in the Book of his Youth de Imperio against all manner of Authority in the Church beside that of perswasion which is none at all Yet in his Notes upon the Gospels he clearly shews the Vanity and the Falsehood of that Interpretation And no wonder when it is done so expressly by the Words themselves in which our Saviour shews his Apostles how they may observe this Rule by following his Example Now it is plain says he that it cannot be said of him that he had no Authority when he says of himself that he had all Power in Heaven and Earth and therefore it cannot refer to the Being of Authority it self but to its kind and the manner of using it That as he notwithstanding the greatness of his Dignity behaved himself rather like a Servant than a Lord and instead of imperious commanding his Subjects condescended to the lowest Offices towards them thereby to endear them to himself and the gentleness of his Government so should all Pastours and Governours in the Christian Church not insult and domineer over their Flocks not govern them with an arbitrary Power or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tyrannical dominion as Gregory Nazianzen expresses it nor enslave them to their own interest and insolence as the Roman Prefects did the Provinces particularly the Governours or Ethnarchs of Judaea who as Josephus informs us were known by the particular Title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Benefactours But to treat them with all gentleness and to be so far from using them like Slaves that they should rather behave themselves to them like Servants i. e. in short to mix nothing of Arrogance with their Authority And that truly becomes the Person and Dignity of a Christian Prelate as St. Chrysostom paraphrases upon it to be affable and courteous to be kind and gentle to be familiar and condescending to the meanest Persons this gains him respect with all Men and makes his Authority much greater then it would be without it Men will much more readily obey a Superiour that obliges more then he commands Whereas on the contrary says he if a Bishop be proud and surly or if rough and peevish or if when he ought to reprove he scold and braul or if when he should command he huffs or domineers or if he affect to be troublesome to his Inferiours and shew the greatness of his Power by nothing else then being pert and vexatious he justly exposes himself to the contempt of all Men loses the respect due to his Person and the Reverence due to his Place Nothing so odious or despicable as a Clown in any Authority but in Church Authority it is so offensive that the indignity of it is not to be express't it is so wide a contradiction to the Place and Office Now the sense of this Text being thus stated as it is by this Eloquent Father it fixes the meaning of all the rest thus when St. Peter exhorts the Pastors not to Lord it over God's heritage where it is all one whether
God had preordained and for the more easie letting of him in and the appointed continuance of him in his Throne there was a special necessity that no such Opinion as this of the lawfulness of resistance whether true or untrue should be taught and believed Whereas now on the contrary that the time of God's preordination and purpose for the downfal of Antichrist drawing near there is a kind of necessity that those truths which have hitherto slept should now be awakened as the necessary means to ruine Antichrist particularly that God should reveal to his faithful Ministers and Servants the just bounds and limits of Authority and Power and the just and full extent of the lawful Liberties of those that live in subjection This is the sum of the new discoveries of John Goodwin in his Book Entituled the Anti-Cavalier And there are divers passages to the same purpose in the Writings of John Owen about the same time who has warranted all the Villanies of Cromwel and his Independants even the King's Murther itself by pretending to new Lights and Revelations from Heaven Particularly That when God is doing great things he gives glorious manifestations of his excellencies to his secret ones So that he that is call'd to serve Providence in high things without some especial discovery of God works in the dark and knows not whither he goes and what he does such an one travels in the Wilderness without a directing Cloud Clear shining from God must be at the bottom of deep labouring with God What is the Reason that so many in our days set their hands to the Plough and look back again Begin to serve Providence in great things but cannot finish Give over in the heat of the day They never had such Revelation of the mind of God upon their Spirits such a discovery of his Excellencies as might serve for a bottom of such undertakings Men must know that if God hath not appear'd to them in brightness and shewn them the horns in his hand hid from others though they think highly of themselves they 'l deny God twice and thrice before the close of the work of this Age. Hence is the suiting of great Light and great work in our days Let new Light be derided whilst men please he will never serve the Will of God in this Generation who sees not beyond the line of foregoing Ages But what is this new Light that was never seen in the World before to this it is fairly answered plainly the peculiar Light of this Generation is that discovery which the Lord hath made to his people of the mystery of Civil and Ecclesiastical Tyranny By which a Monarchy of some hundred years continuance always affecting and at length wholly degenerating into Tyranny was destroyed pull'd down and swallowed up a great and mighty Potentate that had caused terrour in the Land of the Living and laid his Sword under his head was brought to punishment for Blood as he expresses it in his Thanksgiving for his present Majesties overthrow at Worcester p. 15 where he very familiarly bestows upon him the honourable Titles of a Tyrant full of Revenge a man of Blood a Son of Belial Absalom and Sheba the Son of Bichri And lastly he encourages the Rebels and Traytors the day immediately after his late Majesties Murther with a jacta est Alea i. e. the cast of a Dye thrown by the hand of God himself whose Providence he says must be served in it according to the discovery made of his own unchangeable Will But such pretences as these are such desperate pieces of Villany in themselves so framed to serve any wickedness in the World such rank Blasphemy and Rebellion so destructive of all Government and Society that for any man to make use of them is the very height of Prophaneness and when men are come so far it is in vain to confute them because 't is impossible to object worse things against them then they are ready to own But however they unawares make a fair confession that their own Doctrine and Practice is contrary to the Doctrine of the Gospel and the Practice of its Primitive Professors and then we care not whence they receive it for whencesoever it comes it makes them Apostates from the Christian Faith that did not only suppress it but expresly condemn it so that if their new discovery be true there is an end of the Gospel To that height of Prophaneness were these men blown up by their success in Villany that they would rather renounce their Saviour openly before God and the World then quit their Rebellion Though the highest aggravation of it is that after so daring a defiance to the Christian Religion they dare pretend to the highest claims of Gospel Purity But that has ever been the Policy of Enthusiasts to piece out their notorious forfeiture of all Integrity with infinite pride and confidence But thus we see it is aâ—d thus it must be that if men once forsake the Doctrine of the Cross there is no stopping till they come to the Gospel of the Pigeon and the Scymeter And thus having proved the first Proposition the Doctrine and Practice of Submission and Passive Obedience under the severest Cruelties and Perâ—ecutions I now proceed to the second thing to be consider'd in this Interval viz. That notwithstanding this absolute and entire submission to the Civil Powers under all Persecutions they kept up a strict Government and vigorous Discipline within themselves by vertue of their own Authority And that will be a new demonstration from experience and matter of Fact that the highest exercise of Ecclesiastical Power for then it was at the height is so far from interfering with the Civil that it is every way compliant with the lowest state of Subjection to it §. 11. In the first place it is already made evident that our Saviour by his own appointment setled Governours over his Church and that these were the Apostles and their Successors the Bishops through all Ages Now the proper office of all Government is to see to the execution of all Laws already in force and to enact new ones upon particular occasions and emergencies as they shall judge most advantageous to the present state of the Society And this was the work of the Apostles and Primitive Bishops always to promote the Practice of their Masters own Laws among his Subjects and as oft as it was needful to make occasional provisions for the peace and order of the Church Of the former I need say nothing because it is granted and supposed on all hands but of the latter it will be requisite to give a full account because though it is the only means that our Saviour has provided for the Unity of his Church and though by the use of it the Church was preserved in Peace and unity in its best and purest times and lastly though without it there can be no Government in the Church nor any bar to endless
confusions yet I know not by what blind and unhappy fate it is become a popular and a reigning principle among us All Innovators lay it at the bottom of their new Projects of Reformation it is the fundamental Principle of Grotius as well as all other Erastians Legislativam Potestatem jure divino non competere ecclesiae that the Church has no Legislative Power by Divine Right At present to say nothing to the falshood of the Proposition itself yet methinks Grotius who was so well acquainted with the Records of the ancient Church of all men should not have said it when it was so constantly both challenged and put in practice and that not only all the time before the Emperors became Christians but after But he was then a young man and the Book is written with great rawness and betrays lamentable want of consideration It is the very Foundation of all Independency that nothing ought to be imposed by the Governours of the Church upon the Members of it but what is clearly revealed in the word of God And that there is no other Rule of Unity then that rule prescribed by our Lord himself which is so far from truth so inconsistent with the Being of a Church that it is a meer contradiction to the Nature and the use of Government whose proper Office it is to make Provisions for the Peace and good Order of the Society upon all occasions by the common rules of Prudence and Discretion and such things it is necessary to leave to the judgment and determination of Men because their convenience and usefulness is alterable with change of times and circumstances and therefore must be left to the liberty of the Governors of the Church to impose or remove them as they shall judge most suitable to the present State of things This was the standing rule in the Primitive Church that points of Faith were unalterable and when they were once determin'd by the Judgment of the Catholick Church they were never after that to be debated but as for all Laws of Discipline they were alterable with change of times and circumstances And to name one for all Regula quidem fidei says Tertullian una omnino est sola immobilis irreformabilis Hac lege fidei manente caetera jam disciplinae conversationis admittunt novitatem correctionis The Rule of Faith is always the same this alone is unchangeable and unreformable But as this remains forever so matters of Discipline and Government admit the Novelty of change and amendment So that next to the Fundamental Charter of being a Church this is the grand Principle of its Government that its Governours be endued with an Authority of imposing some things that are not required in the Word of God because the Church must be govern'd as all humane Societies are i. e. by men of common sense that have Wit enough to judge what is fit to be done upon any emergent cases and whose Authority is sufficient to oblige the Members of the Society to their Decrees and without it there could neither be Church nor Government So that this principle is so little suited to the state of Church-Purity as the Schismatiques pretend that it is only set up as an impregnable pretence for everlasting Schisms and Divisions For it was never started or so much as thought of till t'other day when the Puritan Faction for want of something more material to object against the Constitutions of the Church were forced at last to make this their main quarrel that they were not préscrib'd in the Word of God And as long as they were resolved to stand to that Exception they were secure in their Schism for it is an Objection not against the particular Constitutions of this Church but the practice of the Universal Church and the exercise of any power in all Churches of the World and therefore it being so good a Fund for Confusion it is for that reason so carefully nursed by the Independant Faction at this day it is the result of all J. O's Books about Schism because it makes all peace and settlement an impossible thing when there is no such rule of worship or discipline as is pretended by attending to which the Unity of the Church is to be preserved and therefore to refer us to a means of Peace that is not in being is to leave us remediless And if the Church may not make occasional Provisions to restrain some mens extravagancies and to settle good order all men are let loose to all the follies in the World and it will look more like a Bedlam than a Christian Church In short it serves to no other purpose then to be an everlasting pretence of Sedition when it takes away not only from the Church but from theCivil Government too all Authority of making any Laws for the settlement of Religion And yet this very Principle of Confusion this Darling of Independency this bulwark of all Schism is crept into the Church of England it self or some pretenders to it and is laid down by our Reconcilers and Peace-makers as the first Rule of Accommodation between the Church of England and the present Dissenters Though if it were admitted the different Parties would be so far from being taken into the Bosom or the Peace of the Church that it would only widen the differences and harden them in their Schisms For first the contest is not primarily about unscriptural Impositions but about divine Commands they contend that their Form of Church Government is of God's Institution and that the form now establish't in England is an humane Government set up against it and destructive of it this is the whole design of Mr. B's Treatise of Episcopacy and this has ever been the main controversie from the beginning of the Schism whether the Episcopal or the Classical Government were set up by our Saviour in the Christian Church for Men were not so unthinking in those days as to imagine he should set up the Society of his Church without setling any Government in it and therefore it is but an imperfect a partial and a treacherous account of the Separation to state the controversie only in Ceremonies when the main controversie has been from the beginning to this very day about a matter of Divine Right and therefore to take no notice of that in the History of the Schism is to intimate that as to that part of the controversie neither had the better of the other but they both equally contended about what never was and that all the blame of the Separatists is their refusing to submit to some lawful Impositions But that reaches not their cause the ground of their Separation is pretended Divine Law they must be beaten out of that or they must be let alone But secondly this Principle of accommodation by rejecting unscriptural Conditions of Communion would be so far from reconciling the Dissenters to the Church that it would only give up the Churches Cause
he commanded his Restitution And Athanasius himself is so far from Accusing the Emperor's rigour that he imputes his banishment purely to his kindness to deliver him from the Rage and the Snares of the Eusebians and therefore when they importun'd the Emperor to put another Bishop in his place thereby to prevent his Restitution he was peremptory in his refusal and would never hear of it without great indignation But however Athanasius being removed out of the way the next thing they endeavour is the restitution of Arius upon his pretended Repentance for it is all along suggested to the Emperor that he had renounced his Heresie and the desired Communion of the Church which was denyed him only by the peevishness of Athanasius and that it was his single wilfulness herein that was the cause of all these troubles The Emperour at their importunity recalls Arius and his Associate Euzoius and for the security of their Repentance they humbly present him with their Confession of Faith in which they come up to the Nicene Creed in all things but only the very word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for though they baulk the word it self they clearly assert the thing and instead of their prophane Novelties That the Son of God was made out of nothing and that there was a time when he was not that are the two main points of the Arian Heresie they now affirm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Son of God to be God begotten of his Father from Eternity but if so it is undeniable that he was of the same uncreated Substance with the Father and this is so easie and intelligible in it self that it was a most unaccountable kind of perverseness in the Eusebians to make so much stir against the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that did but more plainly express the Notion that themselves profess't to maintain But upon this Arius is received and sent to Alexandria with commendatory Letters not only from the Council but the Emperor in which as Sandius adds of his own pure good Will he renounces the Nicene Determination and rejecting the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 recommends to them that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that Alexander Bishop of Alexandria subscribed the Letter and that a Reconciliation was then made between him and the Arians and this he proves with great gravity from Book and Chapter of Socrates and Sozomen but if you consult the places referred to there is nothing like this Story and they happen to treat of quite different matters as particularly the Chapter of Sozomen of the Conversion of the Iberians And as for the Story of Alexander's subscription it is as foolish as false for that good Man dyed long before this time viz. within five Months after the Council of Nice whereas this Letter was not sent till after the banishment of Athanasius that succeeded him and yet after this time does this injudicious Scribler make him to prevaricate his promise and then again Relapse to the Homousian Heresie But this he is forced to do to make something of the inconsistent Tales of Philostorgius who places all this Fable immediately after the Nicene Council but that being so apparently false and against all Records this Historian would thrust it in at this more obscure time but so unfortunately that the chief Actor that he brings upon the Stage was long since out of the World And after the same rate is he confounded and lost through the whole Series of this Story so that at this time he places the return of Eusebius and Theognis from banishment and to it tacks a pleasant Fable of his own pure devising viz. That the Emperor after their return enquiring of them the reason of their dissent from the Decrees of the Council when they had subscribed them â—â—ey answered That they subscribed not willingly but being afraid lest he being offended at the Quarrel should fall off from the Christian Religion as too uncertain and full of Controversie and then from an Apostate turn a Persecutor with which the Emperor being satisfied resolves to call another Council to mend matters but is prevented by death But a Man that can write thus confidently out of his own pure invention is a very fit second for Philostorgius and a fit Patron to make out the fair carriage of the Arians and Eusebians in this whole Story But to return to Arius when he came to Alexandria they shut their Gates against him and he is forced to turn back to Constantinople where was met a Council of Eusebians against Marcellus then an eminent Defender of the Catholique Faith for having at last Conquer'd Athanasius they now resolve to rout the whole Party In this Council Arius presents himself to the Emperor and complains of the affront that was offer'd to him by the Alexandrians but here he is again Catechised concerning his Faith and the Emperor to tye him fast is not content with his bare Subscription but makes him give in his Confession upon Oaâ—â— And upon this security he commanâ—â— Alexander Bishop of Constantinople to receive him into the Communion of the Church which the good Man flatly refuses and hereupon the Eusebians agree to accompany him to the Church with extraordinary Pomp and Triumph but in the midst of the Procession Arius was snatcht away with that strange kind of death that is well known to have been his singular Fate But here our faithful Arian Historians Philostorgius and Sandius are so wise and ingenuous as to say no more of the Stories of Ischiras Arsenius and all the other parts of the Tyrian Plot then that Athanasius was accused in Council of all the Crimes charged against him and by them found Guilty and that when the Commissioners from the Council appear'd before the Emperor they so convinced Athanasius of all the Crimes laid to his charge and so satisfied the Emperor of his guilt that he immediately sentenced him to banishment these are worthy Historians and proper Advocates for the management of the Eusebian Cause that have the confidence to out-face publick and undeniable Records the foulness of all these proceedings was made evident by the Acts of Court yet extant and the Confessions of the Witnesses themselves particularly Ischiras under Hand and Seal and all this within short time after the Transactions themselves published to the whole World by Athanasius himself in the face of his Enemies without any contradiction And now when the whole forgery was thus shamefully exposed in the face of the Sun and stood so upon Record to all Ages are not these wise Men to think that they are able to slur so clear an Evidence only by their trifling it as if all the World were so blind or so foolish as to read or believe nothing but their Fables And yet this incredible confidence is all the strength of these daring Historians This is the true State of the Arian Controversie during the Reign of Constantine and by all the premisses it is
falls to his Brother Constans and so came in that fatal division both of the Empire and the Church that at last proved the utter ruine and destruction of both For after this time we read of nothing so much as Wars and Dissentions between the two States and Schisms and Divisions between the two Churches unless now and then when the Empire hapned to be united in one wise Prince as in Valentinian Theodosius and Marcian till at last the Empire was swallowed up by its own divisions and the incursions of the Barbarians and the Church split asunder by an irreconcileable Schism between the Greeks and Latins The first Foundation of which breach was laid by these two Brothers who unhappily divided the Clergy of the Empire as well as the Civil State For Constantius siding with the Eusebians in the East and Constans with the Athanasians in the West which was now become the quarrel the cause of Arius being wholly laid aside by both Parties and the only contest now was Whether the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ought to be cashier'd as offensive because unscriptural as the Eusebians contended or to be preserved as a necessary defence against the Arian Heresie as Athanasius and his friends truly maintain'd Now each Party having the Power of the Empire to abet and support its interest and the Division being become a kind of a State-Faction this to be sure made the breach wider and the quarrel fiercer then a meer Ecclesiastical Schism could have come to insomuch that it sometime came very near to a Civil War between the two Brothers All which was chiefly occasioned by the folly of Constantius who being the more zealous and serious of the two for Constans gave himself more up to his pleasure and luxury he was so much the more busie in the advancement of his Faction and it is an astonishing thing to observe how childishly he spent his whole Reign in Metaphysical wranglings about Religion as he is justly and too truly censur'd by Ammianus Marcellinus Christianam religionem absolutam simplicem anili superstitione confundens in quâ scrutandâ perplexiùs quam componendâ graviùs excitavit discidia plurima quae progressa fusiùs aluit concertatione verborum ut catervis Antistitum jumentis publicis ultrò citròque discurrentibus per Synodos quas appellant dum ritum omnem ad suum trahere conatur arbitrium rei vehiculariae succideret Nervos He debauch't the Christian Religion that was plain and easie in it self into Old-wives Superstition and by being more nice then wise in his Enquiries and Speculations about it he so entangled it into endless Knots and Controversies about meer words that he wore away the publick High-ways and his own Carriages by conveighing Bishops backward and forward to Councils when after all he took upon himself to determine all controversies by his own Arbitrary resolution of all things And this Character is truer then the Pagan Soldier who understood not the particulars could be aware of for the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was the only object of his fury and as St. Athanasius somewhere expresses it he spent more pains upon it then in all his Persian War what numbers of Councils like so many Armies did he summon to encounter and cashiere it and after what an Arbitrary and unprincely manner did he behave himself in them to have his Will of it Instead of calling free Councils and allowing free Conference in them he takes upon himself the Power of presiding and determining all by his own imperious Commands and at length tired out himself with vain struglings against the Churches Authority and after Five and Twenty years War against one poor single word he repents his folly and dies with the confession of it in his mouth But what if the word did not please his Palate what need of all this rage and indignation against it And granting that it might have been spared at first as those that Seduced him pleaded yet when it was approved and settled by the Authority of the great Council of Nice it ought at least for the Peace of the Church to have been submitted to For to what purpose is it to call Councils for the resolving of Doubts and ending of Controversies if their determinations have not Authority enough to Warránt and Oblige our Obedience This word therefore having been planted in their Creed by the great Council upon mature deliberation it became all modest and peaceable Men though they had not at first approved it after that to make no contention about it And that was the Schismatical humour of the Eusebians that when it was once fix't by the Authority of the Church they should be so restless against its admission which was in effect to destroy and nullifie all Government in the Christian Church For if the Decree of so venerable a Council be not of force enough to ver-rule every particular Man 's own conceit it is but folly and non-sense to talk of any such thing as Government in the Church and this is that which Athanasius in his Book De Synodis every where charges so home upon them that they troubled themselves to call so many Councils and compose so many Creeds to settle what was already done to their hands by the Nicene Fathers And they are gaul'd with the same objection by Julius Bishop of Rome in his smart Letter to the Eusebians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is an affront says he to the Synod and all the Bishops that sate in it if what they with so much Pains and Piety God himself as it were being present resolved should be slighted by us as a thing of no Authority And this to them was a cutting Argument for they all profess't great Reverence to the great Council and therefore ought to have acquiesced in it And as it was in that case so is it in all cases when once a Controversie is determin'd by the Church it ought to conclude all Christians within it Not because the Church is infallible or any Council how great soever but because its determinations are Authoritative and bind by virtue of a divine Commission in all cases that are are not against the clear express and immediate Commands of God himself so that if any Man dare presume to gainsay or disobey any Law of the Church he ought to have an extraordinary assurance to warrant his dissent But if he be refractory upon Surmises and remote Inferences or about matters of no great Weight or little Evidence he plainly runs himself into the sin of Schism in this World and the punishment of it in the World to come And that will fall upon him with so much the heavier Load because the Practice flowing from this Principle is of all things most destructive of that which God of all things most loves the Peace and Tranquility of his Church For that cannot possibly be any other way preserved than by a yielding and submissive Temper in all things
for his zeal to the cause turning Orthodox as it were out of spite and preaching up the Niâ—ene Faith they assemble there in the year 360 in order to his deposition and under that pretence take the opportunity of drawing up a new form of Faith In which they not only dash out the likeness of the Son to the Father as it was in their former Creed but expresly declare a dissimilitude both in substance and will this was the end of all this fatal Tragedy and above thirty years contention about one word against the Authoritative determination of the Christian Church and after all parties had tired themselves A tius a pert and ignorant Mechanick carrys away the ball Thus far says Athanasius have they trifled away our Religion and into what wild conceits they will wander no man can foresee for there is no stop to be set to their Extravagance till they shall return to themselves and say let us return to our Fathers Abhor the Arian Heresy and embrace the Nicene Faith for it is clear that all contention against this let Men pretend what they will at top is for the sake of that at bottom and if men will not stick to the sacred determination there is no way left to keep out the Heresy Nor indeed all the follys in the world for when once the Authority of the Church is despised and this Itching humour of dispute broke out among the People though the Civil Government keep their nails never so short they will be always scratching and drawing blood of the Church And thus was it here for though the definition of the Council against the Heresy would have put an everlasting end to the Controversy as it did during the reign of Constantine yet when it was once laid aside by Constantius to oblige and comprehend as he dream't the Dissenters by some abatement what endless factions did it create Eusebians Aetians Photians Eudoxians Acacians Eunomians Macedonians Psatyrians and Dulians and that was the lowest folly that men could sink into for after all the divisions and subdivisions of one from another some of them came at last to affirm that Jesus Christ was so far from being the Son of God that he was only his Serving-man And this Philostorgius is not ashamed to tell us was preached by his â—elebrated Eunomius in the Cathedral Church of Constantinople But beside these wild Opiniatours the Church by this Liberty was oveâ—run with Swarms of Enthusiasts the most dangerous of all Vermin and this broke out chiefly among the Monks and men of Devotion In Egypt there was a Sect that thought it unlawful to void their Excrements from that Text in St. Matthew 15. 11. Not that which goeth into the mâ—uth defileth a man but that which cometh out of the mouth So easy is it to defile and prophane a sacred Text by applying it to the wrong end and against these Athanasius writ his Epistle to Ammon the Monk And others there were in Palestine that beside many other freaks had this peculiar to themselves that it was not lawful to pray unless alone from that passage of our Saviour Matth. 6. 6. When thou prayest enter into thy Closet and when thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father which is in secret But not to follow the whole swarm of Breezes the two Magots of great Note and Magnitude at that time were the Massalians in Mesopotamia and the Eustathians in Armenia The Massalians first set up with this one Principle That they were obliged to pray always and so do nothing else from that passage of our Lord in the Gospel of St. Luke 18. 1. That Men ought always to pray and not to faint From this conceit naturally issued such a swarm of absurdities as eat up all other parts of Religion for if this was the only necessary thing and so they applyed that saying of our Saviour to Martha the two Sacraments and all other Dutys became useless and they grew so drunk with self-conceit that they pretended to see the Holy-Trinity with their bodily Eyes and to be equal with Christ himself sometimes they would dance upon the Devils and sometimes they would shoot at them and sometimes be taken with suddain frantick fits in which they converst with Angels and foresaw things to come they dissolved all the bonds of humane Society made perjury lawful cancell'd all obligations between Husband and Wife Parents and Children and lastly admitted none to their Society but such as were mark't out by a visible descent of the Holy-Ghost upon them and they were so fond as seriously to fancy that they familiarly saw such appearances As for the Eustathians or rather Eutachtans for Baronius I think has very well proved that not Eustathius Bishop of Sebasta but one Eutactus was the Father of the Sect I have given some account of them above that they were a wild sort of Phanaticks that under pretence of a more refined Godliness degenerated into perfect Ranters and Levellers and the Practice of all kinds of Debauchery But the fullest Description of them is best to be seen in the Canons of the Council of Gangra by which they were condemned viz. that they Abhorr'd Marriage as unlawful and eating of flesh unless it were strangled or offered to Idols that they set loose all servants from subjection to their Masters that they refused to receive the Eucharist from a married Priest that they despised Churches and all Assemblies in them as Superstitious that they set up Meetings separate from the Bishop that they refused to make the usual Offerings or to be present at the Love-feasts That they distinguisht themselves from others by a peculiar Habit and would not Communicate with any that did not wear it that they required women to shave their hair and wear Mens apparel to forsake their Husbands and neglect their Children and Children to take no notice or Care of their Parents that they fast on the Lords day and despise the Festivals of the Church in short they seem to have held nothing unlawful in humane life but marriage nor decent in the worship ofGod but contradiction to the practice of the Church And thus when our schism grows too strong for discipline the Common People never leave wandring till they have tired themselves with roving through all imaginable Exorbitances for these kind of doctrines are not peculiar to that time or place but are the flye-blows of disputacity and the natural effects of unbridled liberty all the world ever § XVIII This that I have described as accurately as I could by comparing the best Records of those times was the true state of the Christian Church under the Reign of Constantius and yet notwithstanding those perpetual Enormities committed by him through his whole Government the two great Articles that I am proving viz. the inherent right of determining Controversies within the Church it self by its own Governours and its entire submission to the Civil Powers howsoever oppressed by
upon any pretence whatsoever but especially of Religion is an utter Stranger to the Catholick Church §. XIX And now are we Arrived at a strange and surprizing Revolution of things under the Reign of Julian who no sooner came to the Crown then he endeavour'd by all the ways of fraud and force to destroy the Establish't Religion of the Empire in order to the Reduction of the old Paganism and Idolatry And considering the shortness of his Reign he was a fiercer and more outragious Enemy to the Christian Church then any or indeed all the ancient Persecutors put together And yet notwithstanding all the wildness of his fury they think themselves obliged by the Fundamental Laws of their Religion to pay him the same duty of Loyalty and Allegiance that they payed to the Christian Emperours But the History of his Reign has of late been made the Subject even of popular discourse and that will in a great measure prevent me in this part of my undertaking the Trifle of Julian having received sufficient Correction and much more then it deserved and I doubt the Jest is now spoil'd and the jolly Doctrine prevented from being popular by its unhappy Application But notwithstanding that I shall proceed in my old Method to shew first how the Church took care to Govern and preserve it self by its own Authority against all the Apostates Opposition and by the right and effectual exercise of it was too hard for all his Politicks against it And Secondly what a tender and a religious sense of Duty and Loyalty they profest and practised towards him in spight of his unparallel'd Provocations Of which I shall endeavour so to discourse as not to repete or interfere with other Mens Observations As for the first it is highly observable that when the Apostate came to the Empire he was all on fire for the destruction of Christianity out of it for though he had suppress't his Apostacy all the time of Constantius yet his zeal was perpetually boiling in his Breast and impatient to burst into open Liberty And therefore the very first moment of Opportunity that it had to discover it self it broke forth as Gregory Nazianzen often compares it like fire from its confinement He immediately commands all the Heathen Temples to be opened and the Sacrifices to be brought to the Altars solemny renounces his Christianity and purges away his Baptism with the Blood of Sacrifices is immediately install'd into the old and abrogated dignity of Pontifex Maximus and officiates at the Heathen Rites in his own Person So that tho the former Emperours took it to themselves only as a Title of Honour he ridiculously takes the Office too and acts all the Phantastick Postures and Pageantries of the Heathen Priests And the fury of his zeal swell'd so high that nothing less would serve his turn then to be created a Priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries because those were esteemed the most sacred and recondite part of their Religion And then he goes on every where to re-edifie and adorn the Heathen Temples and to place Heathen Priests in them And having thus in the first place taken all speedy care for the re-settlement of his own Religion his next thought is how to contrive the utter extirpation of the Galilaeans as he always stil'd the Christians in contempt and derision The best and most obvious Policy that he could pitch upon for that was to bring confusion into the Church For which purpose he grants Liberty of Conscience to all Factions calls back all the banish't Bishops particularly Athanasius Eusebius of Verselles and St. Hilary restores all the Hereticks particularly Aetius whom he invites to Court and returns all their Churches to the Novatian Schismaticks and what mighty endearments there were between the Apostate and the Donatists we have seen above in their History Now from an uncontroll'd licentiousness granted to such a vast variety of quarrelsome People he doubted not to make the Church contemptible to all the World by turning it into a Counter-scuffle For he look't upon the Christians as the most contentious Sect in it usually saying that no wild Beasts were so fierce against men as Christians were against one another And this Character of the contentiousness of Christians among themselves he could not but take up from his Observation of the Cruelty and merciless behaviour of the Eusebians towards the Orthodox under his Predecessor that indeed exceeded the salvageness of all wild Beasts But supposing them never so tame nothing less then everlasting confusion could be expected from such an unbounded licentiousness As Sozomen observes that it was not done out of any kindness but that the Church might destroy it self by mutual discord and Civil War And yet alass so far was he from attaining his ends that his malice was utterly defeated by the wisdom of the good Bishops for they being now freed from that violence and oppression that was put upon the Discipline of the Church by Constantius with his Prefects and Eunuchs and so being at liberty to exert that power that was settled upon them by our blessed Saviour they effectually restored that Peace and Concord to the Church which they could never compass under the oppressive Reign of Constantius put an end to the vexatious Arian Controversie establish't the Nicene Faith over all the Christian World and prevented new Schisms and Factions that were at that time breaking out in the Christian Church For after the death of George the Saint who was barbarously Murthered by the Heathens for affronting their Religion or rather robbing their Temples as 't is attested both by Ammianus Marcellinus and all the Christian Historians but most expresly by Julians own Letter to the Alexandrians where he bespeaks the Actors as true Worshippers of the Gods and blames them for having committed so cruel a Riot out of an over warm zeal for their Religion yet Philostorgius and Sandius have the Grace to say That the Fact was committed by the Followers of Athanasius and that they were set on by himself though he were then absent out of the City After this Athanasius returns to Alexandria where he is no sooner come then he calls a Council for resettling the State of the Catholick Church that had been interrupted by Constantius his fierce and long Oppression of it And at this Council the Famous Eusebius of Verselles was present as he return'd from his banishment in the higher Thebais though the Roman Writers will have it that he came as the Popes Legate without any Authority for it but their own bold Assertion and on the contrary he was so far from coming with any Commission from Rome that he came from a quite distant part of the World and only took in Alexandria in his way And now here the first question is as in all other Persecutions concerning the Lapsi or those Bishops that had joyn'd with the Arians or Eusebians in any of Constantius his Councils whether upon their
Principles of their Religion and then I wonder what our new Apostates can gain by minding us of the Julian Christians And if their case was particular in that they had the Laws on their side as 't is falsely and ignorantly pretended and yet for all that taught the same Doctrine of Submission and Passive Obedience under him and that upon the same unalterable Principle as they did under all their former Persecutions that will be the greatest demonstration of the universality of their Doctrine and set it above all manner of exception upon any pretence whatsoever The Apostates first fury was vented among the military Men Men that from the very nature of their Profession are most apt to resent and revenge Injuries and though he provoked them more by the Contempt and Indignity of his Persecution then by its Severity yet they would rather swallow and digest an Affront the hardest Point in the World to a Soldier then repulse it with the least rudeness much less violence to their Sovereign Lord. And first he caused the Images of the Heathen Deities to be engraven with his own that were set as the Emperors Statues were wont to be in publick Places that if the People shewed the usual Honor to his Statue they might be supposed to worship the Idols and if for the Idols sake they should refuse to take notice of his Image he might punish them for breach of old Customs and Roman Laws in doing honour to the Imperial Majesty And that was another peculiar Enhancement of his Persecution never to punish the Christians as Christians but as Criminals and to the old Cruelties of Persecution to add this new one of Calumny first martyr their Innocence and then themselves And though by this little device he deceived some into shews of respect to his Deities yet the wiser easily seeing through so slight a design refused to give any Signs of Honor and so by their Example soon put an end to the little Stratagem and yet neither they that were cheated into the Folly nor they that were fraudulently punisht for withstanding it made any other resistance to his Commands or shewed any other disrespect to his Person His next Stratagem was somewhat more fine then this It was an old Custom among the Romans for the Emperors on their own Birth-days or other Holy days to give Donatives to their Soldiers and this Julian does but so orders it that near his Throne where he sat was placed a Fire with Incense some of which the simple Soldiers were told as they came to receive their Donative by some that were set there for that purpose they were bound by ancient Custom to sprinkle into the Fire And so great numbers were ignorantly drawn in to offer his kind of Sacrifice but coming afterward to understand the Cheat they run up and down the Streets and Market-places crying out That they are Christians and ever were so that they were over-reacht and meerly drawn in it and they had sacrificed with their Hands they had not with their Hearts and so they address to the Emperor in a Body and request him to take his Gold again and if he pleased to put them to death for they were resolved never to renounce their Religion but were ready to lay down their Lives for it To this Relation Theodoret adds That the Emperor immediately commanded them to be beheaded and they were conveyed out of the City to the place of Execution whither they went with extraordinary courage and cheerfulness requesting the Heads-man to dispatch the youngest first lest by beholding the bloody Execution of others his courage might faint and so one Romanus is first prepared and his head laid upon the Block but just before the blow was to be given a Messenger from the Emperor cries out at a great distance to stop it at which the young man sighing says Romanus was not thought worthy to be a Martyr of Christ. I conceive this is as high an Example of Passive Obedience as any we have upon Record in all the former Persecutions and indeed exceeds that of the Thebaean Legion for they were only decimated at first and so the greatest part were sure to escape but here the whole Body submit themselves one and all to the Ax of the Executioner without speaking an angry or a reproachful word against the Emperor And for this very act of Christian Loyalty they are particularly commended by St. Austin And yet these very Men one would scarce believe it are produced as one of the most remarkable instances of the ill-behaviour of the Christians towards Julian His next attempt was at Constantinople to reform his own Praetorian Bands where he Disbands all Officers that refuse to sacrifice in the Temple of Fortune upon which Valentinian and Valens two of his chief Commanders and divers others peaceably laid down their Arms declaring themselves not only ready to part with their Swords but their Lives for their Religion And to these Socrates adds Jovian though I doubt that is a mistake he being his General in his Army against the Persians In the next place finding all the old Temples at Caesarea the Metropolis of Cappadocia decayed and demolisht and disgraceful punishment says Palladius he endured with all patience and returned thanks to the Emperor for the honour as he had it from his own mouth But whatever his Persecution was against their Persons it was much more then all others against their Religion for beside those perpetual shams that he put upon it to make it ridiculous he dugg at the Foundations by rooting up the Clergy that so the People having no Publick Assemblies for Divine Worship they might in time grow barbarous and lose their Religion And his pretence against them was their raising Seditions And thus he banisht Seleusius and his Clergy from Cyzicum because the Christâ—ans were so numerous in the City that it was in vain to attempt reducing them any other way And so he commanded the Magistrates of Bostra to expel Titus their Bishop and threatned that if the People made any Sedition he would lay the blame and the punishment of it upon the Bishop and his Clergy upon this Titus presents him an humble Address shewing that though the Christians were an overmatch for the Heathens yet he need not fear any Tumult from them because he knew that they would follow his Exhortations to Peace and Patience Upon this the Apostate spitefully and childishly writes to the People to instigate them against their Bishop for slandering their Loyalty as if they were not peaceable of their own accord but were only wheedled into it by his Wit and Eloquence To such mean and dirty Arts did his malice stoop by any ways to do mischief but yet instead of provoking them to any disturbance by all his abuses we find nothing else preached even at this time then the old superannuated and unseasonable Doctrine of Passive Obedience The Apostate's last pranks against the Christians