and let in members by baptism and on just cause cast them out by excommunication and ordain others that shall hold on from time to time to do the same But in discharge of these mere spiritual powers they cannot claim the establish'd places wherein to assemble for these Ministrations nor any enforcement of Civil Laws to make men duly frequent them and to hinder all from disturbing them or from demeaning themselves disorderly or irreverently at them Nor can they claim any secular benefices for maintenance of those who Minister therein nor to have any Cognizance of Wills Tyths or other Temporal matters nor to have their Canons made Regal injunctions or their Rubricks made Parliamentary Laws and the breakers thereof punishable by Civil Magistrates in their estates or Persons nor their spiritual censures to bring men under civil incapacities or make them lyable to civil punishments or the like The state that gave these Civil Accessions to the Bishops and Pastors in their incorporation has call'd them back and taken them away in their deprivation So that now to stick to Christ they must quit the benefits of incorporation and the Favor of Princes And as men left to their naked spiritual powers which no rightful state can deprive them of be content to exercise their spiritual Ministrations in the foresaid cases not as in an endowed and secularly protected but as in a persecuted or secularly destitute Church And as the state has power over all these secular endowments of the spiritual ministration because it conferr'd them So has it 2. Over some other Powers which belong'd to the Church whilst it kept separate but which it gives up to the Civil State during the benefit of incorporation with it For some powers the Church may have no necessity to insist on either for the sake of Religion or of the Souls of Men. And such powers for the greater benefit of incorporation it may be free to part with Thus provided the substance of Religion were secured and kept up among men in all necessary points of Worship and Doctrine and the main of discipline were taken care for by Canons already allowed as it was on the submission of our Church and Clergy made under King Henry the eighth the Church might be free by Compromise to agree that it would exercise no Canons already made but such as were consistent with the Kings Prerogative and the Laws of the Land And that in Case of any others a stop should be put to the proceedings of the spiritual courts by secular Prohibitions And that the Bishops and Clergy should not meet to make more or Assemble in Synod or Convocation but when summon'd thither by the Kings writ Nor any of their agreements should be given out for Canons or Orders but what he allow'd to pass under his Ratification And that after they were passed in things Dispensable on just cause in any particular case he should have the chief power to Grant a Dispensation That all Bishops coming in to Govern this Church according to the foresaid Rules and Prescriptions should be of his Nomination And that the Advancement of all Ministers to beneficed and civilly fortifyed Cures and Administrations should be according to the Rights of Patronage establish'd by the Laws and such like These and such like powers are naturally resident in the Church it self in a separate state or when it stands-upon its own bottom and is not incorporated For as a society it must have power in it self to make needful and wholesome Rules of Government from time to time and to have its Bishops and Ministers meet together as they can that they may make them and to appoint persons who shall be entrusted with the Administration thereof And accordingly whilst the Church was kept separate from the State and persecuted by it these powers were exercised by the Church and by its Bishops and Pastors under all the Heathen Persecutions During which the Clergy under their Bishops and the Bishops under their Metropolitanes were convened and met in Synods and made Canons and decided Controversies and sentenced Criminals and fill'd up vacancies in Presbyteries or Bishopricks having a New Bishop elected by the Metropolitane and Bishops of the Province or sometimes by the Clergy and People of the Diocess and the like Indeed as good subjects of the state they are bound to keep all innocent state Laws and cannot by any devised Canons of their own cast off their Obligation or forbid themselves or the Church to pay a due civil obedience by observance thereof So that they have no power in any condition of making any Church Canons which require subjects to act against innocent state constitutions Nor may they Lawfully refuse when the state calls them to meet together in Synods or otherwise but as Good Subjects are obliged to pay a ready obedience and to appear upon its summons These are only proper expressions of civil subjection from which the Church can in no state or condition plead exemption But tho' they may not disobey the state summons yet when it meddles not therewith in a separate condition they have power to assemble themselves as they can and as need requires taking care to do it in such ways as will make it least jealous of them And when Assembled tho' they can make or inforce no Canons to defeat any innocent civil constitutions they have power in such separate state to make others which are consistent with them and to exercise the other now mention'd powers as I say the Church did in the primitive persecutions But when it became incorporate and was obliged by the favors and priviledges of the state the Church by agreements partly express and partly by Tacit and practical carryed in prescription and the practice of times gave up these and such like powers residing otherwise in it self to the Civil Magistrates who were thus obligingly become its Patrons and Nursing Fathers Since the Emperors became Christians the Affairs of the Church have Depended upon them and the greatest Councils have been held and still are held at their pleasure was the observation of Socrates in the Preface to his Fifth Book of the History of the Church These it parted with to the civil power for its Greater Honor. And also to secure it of its Good Behaviour being tyed thereby to a compliance in things which it was not bound to insist on for the sake of Religion and of a Good Conscience and to prevent all jarring and interfereing with that power in whose Favor and Society it found so great benefit seeking herein to keep up that Beneficial kindness and Correspondence which is between them And these it gave up to it by Degrees and more in some places and less in others Being put upon parting with less at first and with more afterwards especially after the Papal Usurpations in the Western Church grew so very troublesome and prejudicial to Princes and their Kingdoms in point of investitures Appeals c.
Churchmen should generally and shamefully defect from them But this Ministration of those deserted Doctrines is not to separate from it but to stick Firm and Constant to it yea and to keep it up still as a Visible Body for all its true Members to Adhere to And I hope true and faithful Ministers of a Church may stand by it in maintenance and ministration of the Truths and Laws of God tho' that continue on a Breach and keep them at a distance from those Revolting Pastors who have defected and seperated themselves from both The foresaid Justification of Immoral Practices in such particular Cases and maintainance thereof by Doctrinal Salvo's will make the Consciences of Transgressors Easy and in Rest at Sin They will by this Means see no Breach of Duty in what they do nor danger of Punishment for doing it They are taught in these Cases to call Evil Good and to put Darkness for Light whereto such Heavy Woes are denounced by the Prophet and so under the greatest Load and Danger of Sin and Guilt think themselves Safe and Innocent This God calls Speaking Peace to the wicked or to those who should have no Peace but Terror and Indignation in their present Evil Ways And Sewing Pillows to bolster up Evil Doers to make them Easy and at Rest in their Unrighteousness And Strengthning the Hands of the VVicked making them bold and forward in their Ungodly Courses and barring their Repentance and Return from their Wickedness by leaving in them no Conscience of Guilt no Relentings or Remorse for their going on therein Now all this is a direct Ministration to destroy Souls And whilst False Prophets and Devouring VVolves are ministring Lies for their Destruction it is evidently and highly Incumbent on true and faithful Pastors who are set to Save Souls to minister the word of Truth for their Salvation Accordingly amidst all these Preachers of Peace and Strengthners of Evil Doers God tells the Prophets of Israel that they should not like Subtile Foxes have studied only how to slip aside and shun danger by silently Conniving at these Doings But ought to have gone up into the Gaps and have made up the Hedges Seeing they were publick Ministers deputed by God to act for him and for the good of Souls their part had been to stand in his Counsel and to have caused his People to hear his Words and thereby to have turned them from the Evil of their Doings When the People run thus to do Evil in such Cases without any Sence of Guilt or by calling Evil Good they heap up Sin and Death to themselves and know it not and so Perish for want of Knowledge But the Priests Lips must keep up Knowledge among the People and they must have the Knowledge of the Law at his Mouth Mal. 2. 7. And if my People are destrayed for lack of Knowledge because thou hast rejected Knowledge and the Communication thereof to my People I will also reject thee that thou shalt be no Priest to me saith God Hos. 4. 6. Such is the Obligation incumbent on true Pastors to Minister moral Truths when immoral Practises are justified in particular Cases and all the moral Duties opposite thereto are vacated and taken off by undermining Propositions and Doctrinal Salvo's And they are still more strictly obliged to this Ministration if the Practises justified by such Salvo's are 1. In immoralities of Great and general ill Fame and in things extreamly Scandalous to Religion All gross Violations of common Honesty and Justice and Breach of Faith especially when confirmed by Solemn Oaths and renouncing of Duty and Subjection to Superiours more particularly to Patents and Princes and such others are immoralities that all Sober Men think they ought to account Scandalous and of highest Reproach For the Duties transgressed thereby are generally known to be of greatest Importance for keeping up Society and for securing the Comforts of humane Life Which therefore all Mankind that feel such need of Society and would find Comfort in Life cry up and utterly decry the Breaches of them So that these Immoralities are sure to bring the most general Infamy upon any thing that is Guilty of them yea and upon Religion it self should it ever be found or represented as allowing or giving Countenance thereto Now the Ministers of Religion are to be especially careful to preserve its good Name and to keep up an honourable Opinion and Reverence for it among Men. He has nothing of the Ministerial Care or of a Ministerial Spirit who is careless and unconcern'd how ill and irreverently Men think of Religion Indeed if they would keep Religion if self up in the World they must keep up this Reverence and good Opinion of it For if once Mankind come to think ill or despicably of it they are never like to trouble themselves much therewith nor to Labour after much thereof And if they would preserve Religion reputable and secure of Mens Reverence and honourable Opinion they must watchfully keep all those things out of it which deservedly loose and lessen Mens good Opinion They must have a jealous Care to preserve it pure not admitting or justifying any thing that in the common Sense of Mankind is Infamous or of bad Name And therefore if any such things as all the foremention'd immoralities are in an High-Degree offer to creep in or if Satans Ministers are Busie to introduce them they must Oppose and Minister against them with all their Might and presently disclaim and purge them out that Religion may be clear of them They must Watch as far as they are able to keep them out of the Practice of Men least from such Practice of its Professors the Lookers on should Harbour a Presumption or Suspition as if Religion had some Toleration or Allowance for them Let Servants count their own Masters worthy of all Honour and Let Wives be keepers at Home and obedient to their own Husbands c. that the Word of God and his Doctrine be not Blasphemed faith St. Paul directing Timothy and Titus in that Pastoral and Ministerial Care which they should have of the Church But when these ill and infamous things appear not only in Practice but in Doctrines and come not as the blamed and prevaricating Acts of Professors but as Justified and Preached up by their Guides and Leaders Then Religion is more directly and planely brought in and the true Ministers thereof are more highly obliged to oppose them in its behalf to prevent its incurring any Scandal or Reproach thereby Or 2 If they are generally Preached up by Seducers and Men are every where Taught and perswaded to them Instead of giving any Discharge to those few Faithful Ministers that remain at such times the general falling away and Corruption of others adds to their Obligation For God and these moral Truths then have more need of their Ministration And they can have no Pretence left of puting off this Service to other
are they true to the part of Co-workers if they withdraw their Ministrations and leave and let him alone to do all the Work himself They are also said to be Co-workers with him of the Peoples Joy or Consolation 2 Cor. 1. 24. This Joy can be had only in the Way of Holy not of polluted Prayers and of Maintaining not of vacating Gods Precepts and of humbly and industriously Seeking to approve themselves to God by Good not of justifying themselves in Unrighteous and Wicked Practices For in those Ways they have nothing to do with Joy but remorse and Shame and Sorrow are their Portion So that if the true Pastors are to be Ministers and Co-workers of their Joy and Consolation they must Minister and Co-work at such Times to keep up pure Worship and pure Precepts and Practices among them because else they would not have what they may justly Rejoyce and take Comfort in Again the Ministerial Characters may be considered 2. Secondly as they relate to Religion And here also they carry with them a plane Obligation to the foresaid Ministrations in the Forecited Cases With Respect to Religion they are styled Ministers of the Word We will give our Selves say the Apostle to the Ministry of the Word Act. 6. 4. Or Ministers of the Gospel or of the Now Covenant The Gospel whereof I am made a Minister Eph. 3. 7. Col. 1. 23. And God hath made us able Ministers of the New Testament saith St. Paul 2. Cor. 3. 6. Or sometimes lastly Stewards of the Mysteries Let a Man so account of us as of Stewards of the Misteries of God saith the same Apostle 1 Cor. 4. 1. Now as Ministers and Stewards of the VVord of God of Religion and of its Mysteries they stand intrusted with the Charge thereof The Part of Stewards and Ministers is to keep such Pearls of Price safe to supply what is wanting to them or improve them to advantage of their Fidelity and Care wherein they must give a strict Account to their Masters So that as Ministers and Stewards of Religion and of its Mysteries they stand obliged 1. To keep and preserve them They must see that they be not lost nor injured in any Part that the Word of God be not maimed or perverted nor his Worship adulterated and polluted nor his Doctrines and Precepts either denied in Terms or vacated by corrupt Glosses or undermining Propositions This is the First Thing which they owe to those good things wherewith they are intrusted That good Thing which was committed to thee keep 2 Tim. 1. 14. O! Timothy keep that which was committed to thy Trust 1 Tim. 6. 20. Hold it fast and in the Form of Sound VVords wherein thou hast received it 2 Tim. 1. 13. And Remember how thou hast received and heard and hold fast Rev. 3. 3. These things are a Depositum 1 Tim. 6. 20. a good Depositum 2 Tim. 1. 14. or most Sacred and Pretious Things Lodged in their Hands and left to their Keeping So that their first Fidelity to these Depositums must be the Fidelity of good Keepers They must see that they be no worse for being in their Hands that nothing be Spoiled or perish from them but that they have themto produce safe intire and uncorrupted when they are call'd for back again And this Keeping of these Ministers and Stewards must not lye merely in Keeping these things thus Pure and Perfect to themselves But 2. In Keeping them up so pure and perfect among others This Worship is to be a publick Worship and Christs Followers are to joyn in Common and concur therein And this Word is to be generally and publickly communicated and a true Sence thereof is to be born up and held fast in the Church of Christ. So that these Keepers of the pure and perfect Word and Mysteries of Religion must be Ministers to exhibibit and deal them out and Stewards to dispence them The Part of Stewards lyes in dealing of them out as good Stewards of the Manifold Grace of God Minister the same one to another saith St. Peter 1 Pet. 4 10 11. And the Part of Ministers lies in Administrations or in Ministring the Gospel as St. Paul saith Ro. 15. 16. To be Ministers of the New Covenant is to have the Ministration of the Spirit and the Ministration of Righteousness which is therein offer'd 2 Cor. 3. 6 8 9. That is to stand charged with the Administration thereof by Affording People the appointed Ways of Entring and Confirming it in Administration of the Sacraments and of being built up in the Duties and of Supplying and Fetching down the Grace and Blessings thereof in Administration of the VVord and of Prayers And thus the Scripture sets off being Ministers of the VVord by having the Charge of Preaching and Testifying it To make thee a Minister and a VVitness saith our Lord to Paul when he committed the Gospel to him Act. 26 16. And the Ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to Testific the Gospel of the Grace of God saith the Apostle Act. 20. 24. And they were then said to have fulfill'd this Ministry of the VVord when they had Preach'd it all about Act. 12. 25. As therefore they are obliged to purge out all Prophanation and polluted Matter from Worship and Prayers and all corrupt Glosses and vacating Salvo's from the Doctrines and Duties of Religion as their Faithful Keepers So are they obliged to exhibit the same thus purged and cleansed in their own Ministrations that they may keep them up among others as their Faithful Stewards and Ministers And they are very much wanting to Religion and its Mysteries if they do not acquit themselves both as their Faithful Keepers and Dispensers in the foresaid Cases And this Keeping and Dispensation of the foresaid unpolluted Worship and moral Doctrine where that can be had is to be in a regular and standing Church If there is a want of Pastors and People in any Defection to incorporate in the Administration and Profession of them 't is a Fatal Blow indeed to pure Worship and Doctrine in any Kingdom But if a Remnant is left both of Pastors and People who still Faithfully and Firmly adhere thereto their Way is as a Light set on a Candle-Stick or as a City set on an Hill by a visible Communion to profess them and to bear them out before Men. 'T is a Debt they owe to Religion and to Gods Holy Truth and Worship to appear to the World as a visible Church for the Maintenance and Ministration thereof For Religion ought not to stand on scatter'd Individuals but to be born up by Communions of Pastors and People or by regular Societies Our Lord has instituted a Christian Church for the Profession aâ—â— Support of Christian Worship and Doctrine And the Church is to be the Pillar and Basâ—s or Stay of Truth Or that which should support and bear it up and make it both more conspicuous and more
state if supposed to pass on Bishops and Ministers would be no conscionable discharge from keepeng on their spiritual Ministrations against such immoralities as are set down in the aforesaid cases For Jesus Christ who gave them their Ministerial Powers requires them as his Ministers and as Pastors of his Church to exercise them for him and for the Souls of Men as I have shewn when those Cases happen And if the State forbids what he commands they are to hear or obey no state or Power on earth against him But must answer as the Apostles did to the Jewish Rulers in this Case whether it be lawful in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye Act. 4. 18. 19. 20. And thus it must needs be in men who are call'd to be his Ministers under persecuting States and to be Ministers of a Religion which is a Doctrine of the Cross and bids them expect and prepare to bear Crosses under oppressive powers as is plainly the Case of Gospel-Ministers For if they must be his Ministers and administer this Religion in persecutions they must hold on Ministring when the state where they live breaks with them and both most strictly forbids and most cruelly persecutes them for so doing And thus the First Ministers did who were to plant Christianity against all the Edicts and Oppositions of the Heathen or Jewish Magistrates And so did all the Faithful Bishops and pastors thereof who in all the succeeding persecutions of the Church stuck firm to their Ministrations against all the inhibitions and oppressive force of secular Rulers or else our holy Religion had perish'd long since and had never descended pure and perfect as it is to our days And so must all others do in any present or succeeding Tryals which as they always have done so always will seek to suppress Christs worship and Truth by suppressing the pastoral administrations thereof that by their Ministry it may not fail in the Church but be held on the same and continued down to the worlds end But this I say as to their pure spirtual Powers and Ministrations which they neither did nor could receive from the Civil State on which he never conferr'd it but which they hold independantly of Christ Jesus That is what spiritual powers they have received from Christ by imposition of Hands continued down from the Apostles for the feeding and governing of his Church by Administration of the Word of Prayers and Sacraments by leting into the Church and excluding out of it and for providing a constant succession of the same Ministrations by Empowering or Ordaining others These mere spiritual powers they must exercise as his Ministers without regard to any deprivation or inhibition of Worldly Princes For Earthly Kings cannot deprive them of these mere spiritual powers because they have them not from them but Minister therein not by theirs but by Christs Commission If Secular Princes gave them their Commissions to exercise their spiritual Authorities they might recall them If they were the fountain of these powers and could make or ordain Bishops they might have more plea to unmake and deprive them But not originally proceeding from them but from Christ himself by a way of his own prescribing in a succession of Apostolical imposition of Hands through all Ages of the Church They cannot be reversed by their deprivation Nor are the Bishops and Pastors to be debarr'd the exercise thereof in any Case where Christ requires it at their inhibition because they are Christs Servants more than theirs and must obey God rather than man But 3. Thirdly as for any Temporal accessions and enforcements of these mere spiritual Ministrations which the Church receives when once it is shone upon by earthly powers and made incorporate or free of the State These Accessions are borrowed Powers and the Gift of Princes and under the deposition of a Lawful state the Bishops and Ministers of Christ must not challenge or pretend to them As to these I observe 1. That the civil state hath Power over these Temporal Accessions secular endowments because it confer'd them When Kings and Queens turn Christians they come not in only as members to partake in these mere spiritual Ministrations but as Patrons by their secular power to back and Promote them They must shew themselves Nursing-Fathers and Nursing-Mothers as was foretold by the Prophet and serve the Lord as Kings that is by employing their Kingly Power to encourage and advance his service doing him those services which none can do but themselves as St. Austin tells them Thus to give encouragement and leisure for the Ministers to attend on these Ministrations without distraction the civil State endows them with benefices or worldly freeholds Honors and priviledges It also allots them publick and Authorized places for these Ministrations and makes Civil Laws requiring people duly to resort to them and punishing all disturbers of them and such as carry themselves indecently thereat It likewise adds a secular jurisdiction to the spiritual extending the spiritual jurisdiction to the Cognizance of Wills Marriages Benefices c. which are Civil matters and backing it by Temporal Accessions in the spiritual parts thereof making a mixture and Concurrence of Religious and civil powers in the spiritual Courts For thus the Ruâ—ricks it passes into Laws and the Canons also which are the Rules of exercising that jurisdiction it binds on the Subjects with the Kings Approbation and Ratification or with a Civil strengthing And the Spiritual censures or judgements according to these Rules it backs with civil penalties as imprisonment or with putting men under civil incapacities as to plead in an Action at Law or the like Now all these Temporal Helps and Accessions come not to the Bishops and Ministers immediately from Christ or as they are Ministers of Religion For His Kingdom is not of this world Nor was he whilst on earth any judge in civil matters Nor doth he confer any such worldly powers or grant any such commissions But all these secular benefices and fortifications in all the parts of the spiritual Ministry are the gifts of Princes They flow from their favour to the Church or from their taking upon them to be its Temporal Patrons or it's Nursing Fathers and Nursing Mothers And as the Bishops and Ministers of Christ hold them only by their commission So may they lose them by their recalling it So that although the state has no power either to give or to deprive the Ministers of Christ of their mere spiritual powers Yet has it a direct Authority to grant or deprive them of these Temporal Additionals And therefore the Bishops and Ministers of Christ in an incorporate Church when they are deprived by their Rightful Prince or by a Legal State must exercise their mere spiritual powers in the foresaid Cases without any of these civil effects or mixtures That is they can only Administer the Word and prayers and Sacraments
came under Roman Subjection of the Chief-priests by the Roman Procurators who made such frequent Changes among them sometimes Annual as Josephus notes In all these State-deprivations of Jewish High-priests I say there was only a change of Persons but Matters of Religion went on in every thing the same and Men were taught the same doctrines and trained up in the same Practices and held on in the same Prayers Sacrifices Temple Synagogue-Service under both And where it doth not affect the state of Religion or the interest of Souls but only their own personal Claims and Priviledges God's faithful Ministers may be free as has been observed to secure Protection and civil benefits to the Church by not breaking with the State but acquiescing under its deprivations But what voluntary deference were thus payable to a deprivation of State in a case which doth not touch Religion or the Souls of Men must not be expected in other cases which do touch and damnisie and endanger both And thus it is in the fore-mentioned cases wherein I have been asserting the necessity of holding on their spiritual Ministrations and not yielding to be stop'd thereof by any State-deprivations 3. And this also clears the Instance of the submission of the Greeks on the frequent deprivations of their Patriarks by the Turkish Governours The Benefits of Incorporation which they propose to secure thereby are not the most tempting lying not so much in being priviledged and beneficed by the State as in not being persecuted but tolerated under it And their submission for keeping on this State benefit such as it is is not without detriment to the Church tho' their breaking with the State they fear would be more detrimental the Turks as learn'd Travellers inform us making the new Advancements for Money to be levied on the Church by the New Patriark to the countenance and growth of Great Corruption and to the bringing of the Church in debt But as to the course of Religious Ministrations they are the same under both Patriarks Religion or the Word and Prayers and Sacraments are administer'd alike without Alteration and the Souls under their Charge are fed with the same Doctrines both of Faith and good Life and are nursed up in the same Practices and serve God in the same Prayers and publick Offices in both cases And therefore those deposed Patriarks are not driven by insisting on their spiritual Powers and Ministrations to break this partial Incorporation such as it is for the support of pure Faith Worship and Practice or for the Interest of Religion and of Souls as I have shewn true and faithful Pastors are in the fore-mentioned cases 4. The Fourth and Last Instance is of Queen Maries Popish Bishops deposed by a Commission of the Queens Council without a competent and lawful Synod and principally for a State-crime viz. refusing the Oath of Supremacy which was made a cause of deprivation by a preceding Act of her Parliament under Queen Elizabeth And of our Reformed Bishops coming into their Sees upon such deprivation during the others Lives As to this Case of the Marian Bishops or of other Popish Bishops under Edward the sixth Two Things are to be Noted in their Removal and Ejection out of their Dioceses One is from the Temporalities the Benefices and Preferments thereof And these temporal endowments as I have observed are directly subject to the temporal Power So that the Act of Parliament and the Proceedings of the Council and the Commission of the lawful State took away all Claim to the Temporalities and deprived them of their Bishopricks as they were Temporal Free-holds The Other is from the spiritual adherence and dependance of the People upon them as on Heads of Church-Unity and Communion for Religious Ministrations And this there was no need for the State to deprive the Popish Bishops of for they had already deprived themselves of it by their own Corruptions both in Doctrines and Devotions Adulterations of Religion and corrupt Ministrations of the Word of Prayers and Sacraments break the Ligaments which tye on People to this adherence to any Bishops or Pastors yea though they were Apostles themselves Though we or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have Preached unto you let him be Anathema or accursed saith St. Paul Gal. 1. 8. Or instead of sticking to his Communion break off from it and have no more Religious Commerce with such than was to be held with those whom the Synagogue or Church had Anathematized or cut off 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he elsewhere uses it and in the Ecclesiastical Style speaking one excommunicate for so we Christians are wont to call a Sentence against the speakers of impious things says Sâ—crates When therefore any Bishops and Pastors instead of Heading Christian Truths appear at the Head of Unchristian Errors the People are discharged from their obligation and dependance upon them and are to unite themselves as they can to others who still keep firm to that necessary Gospel-Truth and Worship which they have forsaken as shall be shewn more fully afterwards And this was done by the Popish Bishops who fed the People with false Doctrines and polluted Prayers and Ministrations which left no need of any thing more to deprive them of the Peoples Communion and Dependance these Papal Corruptions of Religious Ministrations being enough to discharge and drive them away of themselves So that the Reformed Bishops when they were set at the Heads of those Diocesses call'd none away nor made them break off from any just and due spiritual dependance on their former Bishops whose own Heretical Doctrines and Corrupt Ministrations had made the People cease from depending any longer in Conscience upon them They wanted only to be lawfully empowered and regularly ordained themselves by Episcopal Imposition of Hands as all those reformed Bishops plainly were and the People were free from any Obligations to the Old Ones because of their Errors and corrupt and dangerous Ministrations both lawfully might unite themselves to them and were in duty bound so to do And thus coming to Head a People whose dependance was broke off from others by their spiritual corruptions and depravations of Religion they were no spiritual Intruders And coming into Benefices and Temporalities made vacant by the deprivation of a Lawful State they were guilty of no civil Usurpation and Injustice And this is enough to justifie the Advancement of those first Reformers Tho' where Bishops are Orthodox and deprived for their adherence to Truth and Righteousness both in their private Practice and publick Ministrations the People are still left spiritually to depend on them and are not to be taken off by any deprivation though of the most rightful state as in the above-mentioned Cases 'T is true as to the Popish Bishops themselves they thought otherwise of their own Worship and Doctrines and took them for Christian and Gospel-ways and Truths
not for Anti-christian Corruptions And had they really been what they thought as they were not but quite contrary it had been their duty to go on in their Pastoral Cures and Ministrations with Persecutions for all their deprivations And so we our selves should have thought at least we all seem as if we should if by Gods Providence the civil State had gone on to deprive our reformed Bishops for sticking to the worship and doctrines of the Reformation and had set up Popish Bishops in their Places Notwithstanding which I suppose both our faithful Prelates and People instead of silently acquiescing would have gone on ministring and communicating in the reformed worship and doctrine of this Church But whatever they thought of these things or how consonant or disagreeing soever their Actings were to their own Apprehensions in this case it suffices for justification of our Reformed Bishops advancement to their Sees without their being deprived by competent and lawful Synods which is objected as a thing most exceptionable therein and as seeming most to deviate from Ecclesiastical Rule that in reality they were not Orthodox And that for this want of Orthodoxy without any need of recourse to the Authority of mere State Deprivations to take off people from a spiritual Adherence and Communion with their Bishops the People before they could have a Synodical Deprivation were loose from them and at liberty to unite themselves to the Orthodox Reformers in their Room CHAP. IV. Of Deprivations by Synods in the foresaid Cases ANd thus I think it may sufficiently appear how the manifold obligations which are shewn above to lye on Faithful Bishops and Ministers not to suppress but to exercise their spiritual ministrations in the foresaid Cases are not set aside or barr'd by any inhibition or deprivation though of the most Lawful Civil State They will do it with more ease and worldly encouragement when the State tolerates and much more when it fortifies and furthers them therein But they are not at liberty to give it off but must go on exercising the same when it is more troublesome and when the State gain-says and puts them under persecution for so doing And thus it is where the State will Act apart and proceed without a Synod in depriving Bishops and in discharging the Ecclesiastical Communion and dependance of the people Spiritually related and united to them But Deprivation of Bishops who are Spiritual Powers is more ordinarily by a Synod of Bishops who are a Spiritual Judicature Great Reason there is for the Deprivation of Bishops to proceed in this course The Civil-State indeed comes in by Reason of Civil Accessions and Endowments which strengthen and encourage the spiritual ministrations But these Civil Accessions are but Accessaries and Appendages and their spiritual powers are the Principal in their Ministrations and in Church Communion and dependance on them And therefore the removing of their ministrations and of the Communion and dependance of the Church thereupon is never so fitly and fully attempted as by spiritual judicatures who being spiritual persons have more directly to do with Church Communion and spiritual powers And accordingly this has still been the course of the most Pious Princes who have reserved the deliberations about Religion and Church matters and the Depositions of Bishops which so closely affects Church Communion to Convocations and Synods of Bishops and â—lergy And when these proceed to sentence it more directly affects the concerned parties Church Communion and Church Governors being more directly under the Church-mens Cognizance and not only indirectly and by the by as it may ingage the deprived persons when not bound to it otherwise to yield and acquiesce in voluntary complyance for civil interests But suppose a Concurrence of both these powers and that the deprivation of the Rightful State is confirmed by Synodical Concurrence Yet I observe in the last place that this Deprivation by Synods is not sufficient to bar or discharge Bishops or Ministers from the foresaid Exercise of their Spiritual Ministrations in the above mention'd Cases Bishops and Metropolitanes are not more subject and dependant on Synods than Presbyters and people are on their Bishops Our Lord himself and his Holy Apostles having appointed Bishops in his Church and call'd for our subjection and obedience to them But this submission of Priests and people to their Bishops is with a Salvo to their Holy Religion and its Articles and Interests And if any Bishops go against the Truths or Laws of Christ or against the interests of Souls and of True Religion we are not to follow them or to depend on them therein To stick to any necessary Christian Doctrines Worship or Practices Christs Faithful people and Ministers must break even with their own Bishops holding even them Anathema as St. Paul directs when they would lead them contrary to the Doctrine of the Apostles as I noted before and shall shew more fully afterwards And so must they with any other Bishops or Number and Synods of Bishops in like Case All Exercise and Administration of Church Authority and Jurisdiction is tyed to Rules Not only to Rules of the Churches own making or Ecclesiastical Canons but above all and in the first place to the Rules laid down by Christ himself And all the validity of Church Acts in way of external judicature in Synods or otherwise is so far as they go by them or do nothing against them Thus it is in Decreeing Rites and Ceremonies or Determining Controversies of Faith wherein though the Church has Authority yet is it thus limited and has no Authority as our Church Declares to ordain any thing contrary to Gods word Even general Councils are bounded by this Limitation and things ordained by them say the Thirty Nine Articles again as necessary to Salvation have neither strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that are taken out of Holy Scriptures And thus it is also in Matter of Censures or Ecclesiastical Sentences judicially past therein upon persons whether Laicks or Ecclesiasticks We in the Exercise of our Apostolical Power can do nothing against the Truth or in punishing and Censuring any for Faithful observance thereof but all our Power is for the Truth and to be exercised in its behalf by punishing and not sparing not those who stand to but those who defect from it 2 Cor. 13. 8. When the Church speaks to us in External Judicatures we must hear it as our Lord orders But we must hear it speaking under Christ never against him So that if it Excommunicates any for sticking firm to any part of his Holy Religion with whom for that very adherence sake he requires his Faithful Followers to hold Communion Or if it deprives or discharge any Ministers from Administring the same in any case where he has charged them to keep on that ministration Its power here is set up against him and its Acts have no Power to bind those who are concerned in them
a Wrong to Religion And there they must go on for the sake of Gospel-worship and doctrines which are Christs Cause though they would be content to suffer and sit still so far as it is their own And accordingly the Council of Constantinople entituled Prima Secunda excepts the Case of Heretical Prelates promoting or pushing on any Heresies when it requires Inferiors to stay for a synodical Cognizance before they break off dependance from their Prelates in all other Cases Though Synods therefore are the most Venerable Ecclesiastical Judicature here on Earth yet is all the Obligation and Authority of their decisions or sentences within this Compass They have no Effect or Force against the Truth as St. Paul says or against any for adhering to it So that they are to affect none who have Christ and his Truth plainly on their side Nor do their judgments and definitions bar those who are concerned to take Notice of them from examining and judging for themselves whether they strike at any part of Christian Truth and Religion before they pay Obedience to them I grant there ought to be great deference to their determination and all private Persons are to use great modesty and care in judging after them and need to look that the blow and destruction thereby made to any necessary Truth or Practice of our holy Religion be very plain before they over-look and disregard what they order But still judge they must because in all their belief and practice in these things it is not any implicit dependance on men or a blind obedience to any humane sentence or decision but observance of the Truth it self or of what Christ has appointed in his Word that must justifie them And therefore if on an humble and diligent examination and by plain evidence it appear that in their definitions of Articles or censure of Persons they strike at the Truth and seek the overthrow of any part of Religion their Acts are to be esteemed as of no effect and all concerned Parties both Clergy and People are to go on doing the same in Religious Ministration and Communion as if there were no such thing More just and authoritative Synods they will be like to seek and appeal from these in a regular way to others more general which in external way of humane judicature shall reverse their unjust sentences But suffering all in the Cause of Truth and Religion they will not desist in the mean time but go on notwithstanding any such synodical Anathema or Deprivation in true spiritual Ministrations and Communion PART III. Of Schism CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Schism And of the Schism of Particular Members from their own Church in throwing off Subjection and Dependance on their own Bishops BY what I have offer'd about the Authority and effect of State-deprivations yea or even of the depositions of Synods too I think it may appear how the faithful Ministers of Christ are not disabled or discharged by any such deprivations from the exercise of their spiritual Ministrations whereto they stand bound by so many Obligations in the forementioned Cases But besides the deprivation of State some think the maintenance of Unity in the Church when that is like to be broken thereby ought to stop them of that Exercise And therefore for a further clearing of their duty in those Cases I shall procede 2. Secondly to shew That the preservation of external Communion and Peace in the Church ought not to debar or put by their due discharge thereof Admit say some that it were their duty to go on in their Ministrations for the service of Religion and of Souls in those cases where this can be done in maintenance of Unity and whilst the Church continues one Yet what will you say if such Ministration must unavoidably make or keep up a Schism Do not we all own that to be one of the greatest Banes to Religion and a most sinful and mischievous thing And if otherwise they ought to be held on ought not such Ministrations to be let fall rather than a Schism shall be made or kept up in the Church thereby That there will be a Schism in the Church in such cases is most apparent And that Schism is most dreadful to the Church full of Guilt as it is both the Breach of Unity and the Bane of Charity and an In-let of continual miseries and disturbances is no less apparent But in pressing the consideration thereof upon particular persons or parties for prevention or redress it is to be enquired first who makes it That will shew who ought to mend it but if they will not it may be enquired next who else can cure it Or what the sufferers in love of peace and preferring the Publick before themselves should give up for the Cure thereof that they may duly prize external Unity but not over-value it Or if through the Error or inflexibleness which God avert of those who are the Authors thereof it be already made and cannot be remedyed all are to consider lastly how they are to carry themselves towards the Makers of it and with whom they are to hold Communion To Clear these Points I shall say something I. To the Nature of Schism to shew when a Schism is made and by whom II. To those things which may be a just ground to disunite and break off either from any Persons or Churches without blame of Schism some things not being to be born nor others to be parted with for the love of external Peaâ—e and Union III. To the Communion of good Christians under a Schism and how they are to carry it towards Schismaticks 1. First I shall say something to the Nature of Schism to shew when a Schism is made and by whom Schism lyes in Breach of Union or in Making two or many out of one Schisms says St. Cyprian which cut or break the Unity or tear and divide that which should be kept together as one Body By Schism as St. Chrysostom notes One Church is broken into many Churches and the Unity thereof is abolish'd Accordingly the Members are call'd upon to be joyn'd together in the same mind and in speaking the same things that there be no Schisms 1 Cor. 1. 10. Not to set up an Independance among themselves and act separately but with mutual dependance and conjunction that there be no schism in the body 1 Cor. 12. 25. And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 schisms are usually render'd divisions as 1 Cor. 10. and c. 11. 18. This Union which Schism breaks is the union of a society For the Church is a society of men Associated and incorporated together for the work and purposes of Religion 'T is call'd a Family or †Household or City which are all words Expressive of Society St Paul Styles it the City of the living God Heb. 12. 22. And tells the Christians at Ephesus that they are Fellow-Citizens with the Saints Eph. 2. 19. This
faln from them and tyes us up no further to communicate with them 1. First 'T is always a just Ground to break off from them if they make impious or unlawful things the Terms or Conditions of their own Members or of others keeping on communion with them I do not say it is the only Ground having mentioned others but it is always a just Ground thereof And thus it is 1. When they put impiâ—us or unlawful things into their saecred Offices and mix sinful Matters in that Body of Prayers or Administration of Sacraments which they call others to communicate with What Allowances may be made herein for a generally corrupt state of the Church and how far in necessity and want of others good People may be at liberty still to resort to such I shall consider afterwards But such mixture of Sin and Prophanation in what they are called to communicate in I think sets People loose and leaves them no longer bound to them For the Communion which all Christians are obliged to seek in the Catholick Church is the Communion of Saints This Saintship though it be not always in Reality must at least be always in Profession The Persons must all be profest Saints whom we communicate with And the Things and Offices must all be of profess'd Saintship which we are call'd to communicate in And such those publick Offices are not that have any gross Sins or Wickednesses which are all so many Prophanations for the matter of them This Saintship wherein this Communion is to be held lyes more especially in Faith and Worship And where they fail in either of these we are not bound to communion with any Assemblies It is so plainly where they fail in point of Faith For Heresie which is a corruption of Faith will set us loose as I shall shew hereafter from the communion of any Persons or Churches And Corruptions of Worship are to the full not only as offensive but as openly dishonourable to God who is not more aspersed or provoked by a false belief and confession than by a corrupt and wicked worship So that among those whose business in Religious Assemblies is to see God honour'd and to seek that he may be appeas'd any gross Sins made the matter of Worship which are a corruption of Worship will do the same They not only set God's faithful People free to stand off from such corrupt Offices but oblige his faithful Pastors to standâ—up for him and to minister or afford better out of a just sense of the Peoples needs and jealousie for God's Honour as I shew'd before Besides our chief Obligations to unite our selves to any Religious Assemblies is as they are Assemblies for Worship We as so many live Stones are joyn'd together and built into a Spiritual House to offer up Spiritual Sacrifices as St. Peter says 1 Pet. 2. 5. Yea and as they are purely for Worship not partly for worshipping and partly for prophaning God there being Obligation enough on the Servants of God to meet together to see him publickly honoured but none to see him publickly profaned And therefore we are not obliged to make part of such Assemblies as put up sinful Matters and gross Wickedness in their publick Offices For Worship is a Profession of Honour and Reverence But Sin and Wickedness are Professions of Irreverence and Reproach and so are not Worship but Profanations So that the Obligations incumbent on God's Servants to meet there where Offerings are to be made that are for his Honour yea only such as are for his Honour will not bind them but if they can serve him any where else rather forbid them to meet there where these Prophanations are Thus is the Matter of Religious Meetings or the Worship and Service there performed the chief thing that carryes the Obligation to them I say the chief but not the only thing For we are Members of a Church as well as Professors of a Religion and as Christians are incorporated into a Society as well as instructed in a Doctrine And both these bind us to Religious Assemblies For as good Christians we ought to meet there to shew our Adherence to the Church as a Society or our Union to it as Members as well as to put up Prayers to God by JESUS CHRIST or to pay our Religious Worship and Service That is our Christianity obliges us to meet together both to present our Religious Oblations and Acknowledgments to Almighty God and to do it in dependance on our Lawful Pastors or in the Unity of the Church But this Obligation to these Meetings as thereby keeping Union with the Church as a Society is but a Secondary Obligation and that of paying truly Christian and acceptable Worship is the first and chief therein For the end why Christians were formed into a Society was to keep up the Profession and Payment of that Holy Doctrine and Worship which are necessary or peculiar to them as they are a Sect or Religion And the Members are bound to stick to it whilst it stands upon this Doctrine and Worship not when it starts off from it It is the Religion which recommends the Church And we are to chuse our Church or Assemblies for the Religions not our Religion for the Churches sake So that their falling off from pure Christian Worship and Doctrine which are necessary to the Religion to its honouring God or our acceptance by it loosens the bond of Union to any Assemblies and sets Men free to joyn with any others regularly empowered who stick faster to them Agreeably to all this we find Faith and Worship spoke of as the Great Ligaments that are to bind and unite us to any Church Of the Ligament of Faith I shall treat in its proper place And as for Worship which lyes partly in confessions of Faith but more especially in Prayers and Sacraments it is a Ligament too and Prayers and Sacraments are set off as compacting us into one Body or cementing us into one spiritual House Thus of Prayers St. Peter says we are set together as one spiritual House to send up spiritual Sacrifices 1 Pet. 2. 5. And of the Sacraments it is declared that we are all baptized into one Body 1 Cor. 12. 13. and that we are one Body by partaking all of one Bread 1 Cor. 10. 17. and by having been made all to drink into one Spirit 1 Cor. 12. 13. therein referring to the one Loaf whereof we all eat and to the one Cup whereof we all drink in the Holy Eucharist Now as that Faith which is to unite and bind us to any Churches or Assemblies is not any Erroneous or Heretical Tenets as I shall shew anon but the Orthodoâ—c and Right Faith So is that Worship which is to do the same not any sinful and prophane but a truly Christian and Holy Worship or such an Oblation of Prayers and Administration of Sacraments as Christ has instituted and appointed and will not reject and punish but
necessary warnings nor Faithful Ministers let fall their Ministrations in the foresaid Cases on pretence of preserving unity or preventing Schism in the Church 2. Secondly it is another just ground to break off from them if they make unrighteous usurpations and incroachments the Terms and condition of their Communion Both Bishops and Churches may turn Tyrannical and Arrogant Usurpers upon their Brethrens Liberties not admitting their own Members to their Communion without acknowledging and submitting to their unjustly and illegally assumed powers nor other Churches unless they will give up their own rights and freedoms and become their Subjects And when they will allow Communion to none unless they are content to purchase it at such rates good Christians may pass them by and unite themselves to other Churches where they will be more justly and fairly dealt with The Communion of Christians is a Commuuion of Brethren upon Brotherly terms not of Captives who must submit to any terms or bear what hardships and incroachments are put upon them by their Conquerors They are not bound to purchase unity by enslaving of themselves or any brethrens communion by receiving their yoke and giving up their own rights and liberties as the Church of Rome demands all other Churches both of the East and West should do to purchase hers And thus St. Paul declares he would not give up their liberties when false brethren turn'd invaders thereof viz. the Judaizers in their pressing the Circumcision of Titus to whom he gave place by subjection no not for an hour when they sought to bring them into bondage Gal. 2. 4 5. CHAP. IV. Heresy a just Ground to break off Communion THe last ground which I shall mention of breaking off or of being set loose from the Communion either of Bishops or Churches is though none of the foresaid obstacles can be pleaded against the Terms of their Communion if yet 3. Thirdly Heresy can be justly objected to their persons and Doctrines Church Members are not bound to keep dependant on the persons of their Bishops nor one Church to keep Communion with other Churches if once they defect from the true worship and Doctrine of Christ. This worship and Doctrine are the Ground and Foundation of Christian Society and unity The Church is a Body of Men Associated for them And must be one Society by keeping united under their Bishops or Associated with other Churches in them They must keep one in standing together upon this bottom not in going off or departing from it For clearing these matters it is to be observed that our Saviours first end in coming into the world was to publish a Religion I am come a light into the world saith he of himself Jo. 12. 46. I must Preach the Gospel for therefore am I sent Luk. 4. 43. On this account he calls himself the Way the Truth and the Life Joh. 14. 6. And tells Pilate that for this end was he born and for this cause came he into the world that he should bear witness unto the Truth Joh. 18. 37. And this Truth or Religion lyes in his Doctrine of worship faith and Practice Or in his Teaching all his Disciples what way they are to worship God what they are to believe concerning him or other things which concern their Eternal Salvation and what they are to do for him Now this Doctrine was like to be most advantageously profess'd and this Worship to be best paid if it were not left to single persons or to scatter'd Families to do it separately by themselves But had its several professors incorporated into one Regular society and united body for the joynt profession and performance thereof Such Regular society would hold it out by more orderly and effectual Ministration and keep men to it by the Authority of Discipline and be a common help and spur to excite and aid each other mutually and carry them on and a cover and shelter to back embolden them therein A Regular Society or Church incorporated for the Profession thereof St. Paul says is a Pillar and Ground or Stay to publish and support it Accordingly when Religion was left to be born out by smaller societies and sometime even by single families as in the Patriarchical Age we see it was sometimes almost lost and always made a very small progress But when a whole Nation was incorporated into one Church for the profession and payment of it as it was among the Jews it spread further in power and influence and gain'd more proselytes And lastly when all Nations as fast as they turn'd Christians were embodyed in one society for the same intent as a Light set upon a candlâ—stick or as a City placed on a hill it desplayed its force far and near and strengthen'd incomparably more hearts in it and drew more eyes after it And therefore our Lord intended and ordered in the next place that all who embraced this Religion should incorporate or unite together in one Church or Society for the Profession of it Accordingly he has made baptism wherein every professor takes upon him this Religion to incorporate him or enter him a member of this Church Baptism as St. Paul notes uniteing us all in one body and as many as are baptized into Christ are all one in Christ Jesus And requires of every professor of this Religion that he Keep on professing it in the unity of this Church And that all of his Religion pay this worship and profess this Doctrine not separately by themselves but socially in joynt Communion with others So that all who come to embrace the Christian Religion must perform the worship and profession thereof in Christian Society or in the Unity and Communion of Christs Holy Catholick Church But we are first to be all of this Religion and then to profess and perform it in the Unity and Communion of this Church The Doctrine and Worship I say which makes us Christians are the Foundation of that Society and Unity which is to be upheld in the Christian Church Thus on Peters Confession our Lord declares he would build his Church Mat. 16. 16 18. And the Uniteing of Christians into one Temple St. Paul says is by their being built on the Apostles and prophets i. e. On their Doctrines about worship faith and practice Eph. 2. 20. 21. And when our Saviour prays so earnestly ly for the Unity of his Church at what time he was about to leave it he limits it to this that they may be kept one in Gods Name Joh. 17. 11 and calls the Gathering or Uniteing together of Christians in Congregations wherein he will be in the midst of them their gathering together in his Name Mat. 18. 20. In his Name that is in his Doctrine or Profession of Faith and Worship Name with relation to Masters and Teachers being usually put for Doctrine As to bear my Name before the Gentiles is to bear my Doctrine Act. 9. 16. and teaching in
Christs Name is filling Jerusalem with his Doctrine Act. 5. 28. ver 41. And the Priests and Rulers forbidding the Apostles to speak to any Man in his Name is forbidding them any more to preach his Doctrine Act. 4. 17. 18. And so when our Lord prays to his Father that his Disciples may be kept in his Name to the end that they may be one he notes the necessity of continuing in his Doctrine to their keeping his so much desired Union Jo. 11. 17. Accordingly he adds that they may be one as we are viz. he and the Father For their Unity is by this way among others viz. by keeping to the same Word or Doctrine he teaching them what he had from his Father v. 8. And this is to be kept one after his departure as they had been kept one before as he continues to pray v. 12. For before they had been united in his Word which he gave unto them and which they had received and kept v. 6. 8. Thus also St. Paul tells us that the giving of Pastors and Teachers to Edâ—fie or compact us all into one Body of Christ is for edifying us in the Unity of the Faith and of the Acknowledgment of the Son of God Eph. 4. 11 12 13. And that the Church is to be one Body in holding to the oâ—e Faith Eph. 4. 4 5. And this has been the currant sense of the Christian Church The Vertue which keeps the Church together is Faith saith the Pastor Hermes as he is cited by Clemens of Alexandria We are constituted one Body of Christ and Members â—re of another by having the same Faith with him and with one another say the Fathers in the sixth general Council By the joyning of Charity and Faith Christ binds us up â—â—to one Body in himself saith St. Gregory the Great And we Christians are a Society says Tertullian incorporated on a Belief of the same Religion Or as he elsewhere expresses it confederated in the Fâ—llowship of the same Profession As to Points of Faith I understand this more particularly of those Points which are more important and call'd Fundamental and are all contain'd in the Apostles Creed These are the necessary and grand Points of the Christian Religion and the Belief thereof makes us Christians and accordingly they are all profess'd in our Baptism when we take this Profession upon us And this Faith is one necessary Bond of Union to keep Christians together in one Society Their first care must be to keep to this Faith which makes them Christians and in this Belief of the Christian Religion their next care must be to keep to any particular Society or Christian Church Other Points of Belief which are more remote from the Foundation do not so generally influence Mens Salvation nor so necessarily break off Communion but that Men may hold on joyning in the same Offices notwithstanding their embracing of some erroneous Opinions And under such Errors Peace and one Communion were pressed by the Apostles I conceive on the Churches in their Days But these being more necessary and essential to the Religion are more necessary also to the keeping of Society and Communion which is to be kept up among those who are united and agreed in this Religion And since all Church Association is to be on this bottom of Chrian Worship and Doctrine good Christians Unity or Dependance on their Bishops or one Churches Communion with other Churches is only to be whilst the Bishops and Churches themselves keep united to Christian Worship and Doctrines 'T is to their Bishops as to their Spiritual Teachers on whom they are to attend as obedient Disciples and so whilst they instruct and train them up in God's Truths not in ungodly Errors 'T is to them as they are Christs Ministers and so whilst they minister his Word not their own As joynts Eph. 4. 16. Col. 2. 19. And joynts are to compact or pin the Materials or Members together whilst they rest upon the Ground and Bottom viz. the Doctrine not when they start aside and go off from it And of an Heretick St. Paul says that he is turned aside or like a corner-stone started out of the Building So that the other Parts are no longer to be knit together into one spiritual House by him When People come at first to be Church-Members and to unite under their Bishops the Doctrine and Worship is first laid as the Ground-work for both the Head and Members to stand upon Thus we see it was in the first Formation of Churches and setting up external Union and Dependance under Bishops The Christian Doctrine was first taught and received which was the Foundation laid I have laid the Foundation says St. Paul when he had planted the Faith 1 Cor. 3. 10. And on the Foundation so laid a Church was raised and Bishops chosen out of the first-Fruits of the Converts as St. Clemens says and set over those that believed And ever since before Men receive Baptism to make them Church-members there is a Profession made of the Doctrine of the Apostles both in Faith or the Articles of the Creed and in Practice or the Commandments So that 't is Bishops heading of this Doctrine and Worship which bring Members to incorporate and unite under them And as their heading it brings People to them so their rejecting or defecting from it loosens the Tye and sets them free to go off again Their Fellowship with the Apostles and our Obligation to hold Fellowship with them is tyed to their keeping the Apostolical Declarations of what they had heard or seen 1 Jo. 1. 3. And in the Account of the Communion of the Primitive Christians the Fellowship of the Apostles and of the Bishops their Sucessors is linked to the Apostles Doctrine and to their breaking of Bread and Prayers Act. 2. 42. If a Bishop then defects from Christian Doctrine and Worship or falls into Heresie or Unchristian Worship that is a Discharge of his People from their spiritual Dependance and Relation and supersedes the Obligation of keeping Unity under him If we the Apostles or even an Angel from Heaven should preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have already preached unto you let him be Aâ—athema or Accursed that is have no more communion and commerce with him than with those whom the Synagogue or Church has cut off Anathema being the Word for one excommunicate both in the Scripture and in the constant Language of the Church Gal. 1 8 9. And this he says as St. Chrysostom notes not only against those who subvert the whole Gospel but against those who go a little beside it or overthrow any Parts thereof And if a Church defects from the same it sets other Churches loose in like manner from the Obligation of holding on communion with them Unity of Faith binds them mutually to observe the Rules of fraternal communion and defection in Faith
Corruptions of both Then the way of worship and Tenets themselves are Formed into Parties Men are divided then in opinion and devotion and each way has a distinct body or society visibly to bear them up and profess them And when opposite Communions are thus set up for opposite Worship and Articles mens Communion must go according to their Opinion of the worship and Doctrine For in a breach made for these it will not be expected that men should Unite themselves to those of a contrary minde and keep off from those of the same minde but take part with those who agree with themselves We must Chuse the Church for the sake of the Religion and Unite to that as Christs True Church which sticks to the True Religion Church-Unity and Association always supposing and following True Christian worship and Doctrine but never tying any to go off and separate themselves from the same as I shew'd †before Such will be the effect of the preceding Apostolical and Ecclesiastical Rules for keeping the Unity of the Church and for avoiding Communion with the Schismatical breakers thereof and their Assemblies when a Schism is made by setting up Anti-Bishops to Head immoral or otherwise sinful worship Doctrines or Practices as in the foremention'd Cases The meeting or Communicating in a Schism has a Guilt and Criminalness of its own tho' the matter of all the Prayers were Good and the Preaching Orthodox which they were call'd to communicate in â—â— It alone were a Bar to Communion and would have the forecited Effects as I have shewn But 't is stronger when 't is set up for the Maintenance of Error and corrupt Devotion and when Men are 〈◊〉 into Schism to be drawn on to other Wickedness viz. to make 〈◊〉 of Moral Conscience and to prophane God by immoral-Prayers as they are in the above-named Cases CHAP. VI. Of Ordinations of Anti-Bishops which though always Schismatical are not always Nullities WHat I have said in the foregoing Chapter I think may be sufficient as to the Point of Communion with Anti-Bishops and then Adherents But I conceive it may not be amiss to add something further concerning their Orders since the validity or invalidity thereof â—â— of greatest Consequence and Importance to the Church at such Times One thing indeed is said by St. Cyprian about the Ordaining an opposite or Anti-Bishop against another in a Church already fill'd as when Novatiâ—n was set up at Rome against Cornelius viz. That the Anti-Bishop is no Bishop whence some conclude that in reality he has not the Episcopal Powers conferr'd on him Since after the first there cannot be a second Bishop says he or two Bishops at once in the same Church whosoever is Ordain'd after one is already in who ought to preside alone he is not really a second Bishop but no Bishop at all And if such opposite or Anti-Bishops receive or retain no Episcopal Powers 't is sure they can confer none And then they are really neither Bishops not Priests who are Ordained by them And so neither good Baptisms at least according to the Opinion of the Africanes nor good Sacraments which are of their administring As St. Cyprian and the Africanes answerable to this nulling of the Ordinations null also the Baptisms made by Schismaticks And then on every Ordination of Anti-Bishops against them there would be a new and indispensible Necessity for all the suffering and oppugned Bishops to insist upon their own Powers and Claims lest otherwise the Church should neither have Bishops nor Priests nor the People any valid Sacraments and Church Administrations For the Anti Bishops receiving no Power or Authority for these Administrations from their Ordainers their Ordination being null as he says They can not be impowered according to the Christian Rules of conferring Powers without a New Ordination The conferring of Orders or of Ministerial Powers is tyed by our Lord himself to a particular way viz. Imposition of hands by impowered Persons In point of Orders as of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist the effect is affixed to the Rite of God's Institution So that such Imposition of Hands must give them And if the former Imposition of Hands was null in these Competitions they can not have these Powers of Orders but by a New one The receding of the former Bishop or his ceasing to make any further Competition were they already vested with these Powers by their own Ordination would give the Anti-Bishops scope to exercise the same and to do it alone without any Rent or Division But such Recession is no Ordination nor gives them the Episcopal Powers if they had them not before Yea I add nor would any mere Allowance or after-Ratification of Synods confer the same as I conceive without such New and Valid Imposition of hands When Men pretend they have already received these Spiritual Powers meet Allowance admits of their Pretences But I see not how that alone should confer the Powers if before they wanted them Nor doth mere saying I allow thee to be a Bishop or a Priest without Words not only pre-supposing but actually and from that time conferring Authority upon the Persons seem enough to make them such Which in my Apprehension would make little of the Power of Orders and would be a very lax and cheap Salvo to make good the Usurpations which either now or at any time heretofore have been made by Sectaries upon the Priests Office Besides when they would empower Persons even Synods themselves or Bishops met there can not confer Orders as I say more than Sacraments by what way they please but are bound up as I apprehend to Divine Institutions and are not left to dispose of Ministerial or Episcopal Powers by way of Sentence or of Legislation but only by Imposition of Episcopal Hands But however it might be in the Opinion of St. Cyprian and the African Church of that Age the Africans carrying the effect of Schism farther than others to the Nulling of their Baptisms and Ordinations I think this nulling of all Ordinations of Opposite or Anti-Bishops or making them null in themselves is no Catholick Doctrine nor did the Church tye it self thereto or procede thereby in other Ages The two most Famous Schisms headed by opposite or Anti-Bishops in the Primitive Times and consisting of Men who retain'd the same Faith with the Catholick Church were those of the Novatians and Donaâ—ists But the Ordinations of Anti-Bishops were allow'd to make Men Bishops and Priests in both these Cases One was the Schism of the Novatians which I think presents us with the first setting up of Anti-Bishops in the Christian Church against other Bishops keeping to the same Faith that was profess'd by themselves and which is of the more Account in this Case because of this St. â—yprian himself speaks saying on Account of Novatian when he set up as an Anti-Bishop against Cornelius that the second Bishop is not really secundus but nullus not a second
OF Christian Communion To be kept on In the Unity of Christs Church and among the Professors of Truth and Holiness AND Of the Obligations both of Faithful Pastors to Administer Orthodox and Holy Offices and of Faithful People to Communicate in the same Fitted for Persecuted or Divided or corrupt States of Churches when they are either born down by Secular Persecutions or broken with Schisms or Defiled with Sinful Offices and Ministrations In three Parts Printed Anno Dom. 1693. THE PREFACE Reader 'T IS a sad thing when any Kingdoms are divided about the Payment of their Allegiance and Civil Duties which must needs bereave vast Numbers of the Innocence and more of the Comforts and Quietness of Humane Life But it is still worse when this grows into a Division of Churches and Breach of Religious Communions For besides that Religion is the chief of all things which can concern us and whereon we must Build all our Hopes of Good in another Life Religious Exercises and Assemblies should be the properest Cordial to Revive our Spirits and the best and surest Refuge for us to flee unto in the greatest civil Distractions But such Division of Churches and Communions unsettles and distracts the Hearts of Good and Pions People about this and makes them at a Loss where to serve God and say their Prayers And this must put all who pretend to seriousness or a Religious Spirit on shewing Compassion and some on endeavouring Relief and on reaching out such things as may direct and be of use to them in a Safe and Conscionable Guidance of their Steps at such times And this is the Design of this Treatise Wherein my Business is not at all to Dispute the particular Titles to any Crowns or to examine the Claims of the several Pretenders to them In that I leave every Honest Mind to other ways of Informing and Satisfying themselves and of Forming such Judgments thereof as Truth and Justice shall happen to require in their particular Case But when by those Ways they are come to be resolved therein I endeavour to shew them what things lie most upon Conscience either their Pastors or their own as to Church Ministrations and what way they are to take about Religious Offices and Communion on such unhappy Divisions These Matters I Treat of not as they are State Points like one who seeks only to be a Stickler in Civil Differences or to help those who on such Breaches Study only to make a Bustle in State Parties But as they are Matters of Religion and concern all who would keep in the Favour of God and in the right Way to Heaven For my Design and Study all along is to shew how they who desire nothing more than to save their immortal Souls may keep free from Guilt and Eternal Danger in these particulars My great Care for them and for my self in these Matters being how we may truly and acceptably Serve God more than any Temporal Interest or the Cause of any Persons or Parties in this World And this I offer to the Conscientious who prefer Religion before Worldly Ends and Eternity before this Life And who in these Differences are Willing and Desirous to take the sure Way to Future Peace and Everlasting Bliss however the same may expose them here to Worldly Difficulties Uncomfortableness and Persecutions As for the Ways and Practices here spoken off I have given warning of their Gullt and Danger with planeness And this is necessary in all good Christians especially in Ministers who are not to call Evil Good or to give soft Names to ill things and to palliate Unrighteousness instead of exposing and exploding it which were to take part with Wickedness and to sew Pillows for the Bolstring up of Sinners I am sensible what need there is of Charity and Candor at all times especially on the Bursting out of Differences And how indispensable Christian Duties these are not only in Men at Ease but in Confessors and Sufferers for Righteousness towards their Persecutors If I keep not Charity though I give my Body to be Burned and Suffer Martyrdom it Profiteth me nothing 1 Cor. 13. 13. And when we see Men inapparently Wicked and Ungodly Ways or Unrighteous Things done 't is the part of this Charity and Candor to shew Favour and Easiness in Judging of the Dispositions of Mind wherewith they do them Ascribing them so far as it can find any reasonable Colour or Pretence thereof to the most excusable Principles As to their being Mislead by the plausible Arguings of Deceivers or to an Error of their Judgments rather than to their acting all the while against their own Belief and Convictions And to their being over-awed by Fear of Princes or of Popular Violence or being Forced by Worldly Wants and Necessities rather than to their doing the same willingly and of themselves or out of Malice As our Blessed Lord whilst he hung upon the Cross most Candidly imputes the Wickedness of his Crucifiers to their Ignorance Father forgive them for they know not what they do Luke 23. 34. It is also the Part thereof freely to encourage and Friendly to desire and endeavour their Return rejoycing to have them see their Folly rather than to see them suffer for it And without Upbraiding them with the Remembrance of former Errors Amicably to Welcome and carry on the Change when through the Blessing and Grace of God they are wrought upon by whatever Methods of Providence and begin to come to themselves But whist it is so Favourable in judging of the inward Dispositions of the Persons 't is no Part of this Charity and Candor either to think or to speak Favourably of the Ungodly or Unrighteous things themselves whch are set up or driven on at such Times The unlawful Practices themselves it censures with Justice being a Charity that is Pure and Pious and that is careful for God and for the Duties of an Holy Religion in the First Place Out of Love to God and Religion it cannot Favour Vices or softer and take part with any Sin Yea and out of Love to Men it cannot speak softly of destructive Courses or represent any ungodly Ways or Things as less Dishonourable and Offensive to God or as less Dangerous to Souls than in the End they will find them So that they are mightily Mistaken who think it any Part of true Christian Charity and Candor to befriend ungodly Practices or to minee and soften unlawful and unrighteous Things which were to conspire with Sin and Wickedness against God and Religion and to betray the Souls of Men instead of befriending them I am also sincerely and conscientiously srudious of Peace and to keep Men unreproveable in that is one intent though not the only one of these Papers And before open Breaches are made the Love of Peace will spend it self in endeavours to prevent them But if they are made already as they are to a great Hight when the Espousers of ill
are not only set up but justified 1. In some particular Cases especially of general Concern CHAP. IV. More of the Cases wherein Faithful Bishops and Ministers are bound to stick to their Pastoral Powers and Ministrations THey are still more bound to this Ministration when 2. This Justification of immoral Practices is by eluding and vacating of moral Precepts opposite thereto by Doctrinal Salvo's Instances of these Salvo's How they vacate the respective moral Precepts Such Salvo's make a Change in moral Doctrine though Men still own the Duties under their general Names The Duty of Pastors to defend and bear up moral Duties against such Salvo's by their Ministrations shewn at large And this when such corrupt Salvo's are only the Doctrines of the Pastors not the Determinations of the Church They are more strictly obliged thereto if the immoral Practices justified by such Salvo's are 1. extreamly Scandaelous to Religion 2. Generally Preach'd up by Seducers Or 3. Come strongly recommended to carnal Passions and Interests chiefly if driven on by general Persecutions CHAP. V. Of the Obligations to actual Ministration which lie upon them in the foresaid Cases THese deduced from their Office and Characters as they relate 1. To God and stand in Place 1. Of his Messengers 2. Of his Ministers and Ambassadors The various Obligations laid on them thereto by this 3. Of his Co-workers 2. As they relate to Religion as they are Ministers and Stewards of its Word and Mysteries The Obligations arising hence CHAP. VI. More of the Obligations to actual Ministration which lie upon them in the foresaid Cases 3. AS they relate to the Souls of Men and are set over the Church 1. As Watch-men 2. As Overseers 3. As Guides or Leaders 4. As Pastors or Shepheards 5. As Doctors or standing Teachers of the Church As Lights of the World and the Salt of the Earth Their Obligations to such exercise in the foresaid Cases from all the foresaid Characters Different Degrees in this Obligation A Spirit of Love and Zeal to Christ and his Church which stand not upon strict Terms the Spring and Principle of this Exercise How this clears the Duty of deprived Bishops and Clergy as to this Exercise on such Revolutions Answerable to this Obligation of the Pastors to afford such Ministrations at such Times is the Peoples Obligation to adhere to them and attend on them for Participation thereof PART II. Of Deprivations by Civil States or Ecclesiastical Synods CHAP. I. Of the Force of State Deprivations in the foresaid Cases THE Plea of a Deprivation of State represented in Bar of their Ministrations in the foresaid Cases Concerning which 1. This is to be press'd only under a supposed Legal and Rightful State 2. It s Deprivation is no conscionable Discharge from their Spiritual Ministrations in the foresaid Cases This is meant only of pure Spiritual Ministrations Not 3. of any Temporal Accessions and Inforcements of those Ministrations over which the State has Power because it conferr'd them As also over some other Powers belonging to the Church whilst it kept separate which it gives up to the State during its Incorporation with it These it gives up 1. with a Salvo to the Interests of Religion and of Souls 2. Only whilst it continues protected not when the State puts True Religion under Persecution CHAP. II. Of the Kings Ecclesiastical Supremacy Received and Asserted by our Church It lies not in his being invested with or having a Sovereign Disposal of the Powers of Orders But 1. in retaining his civil Power over all Persons whether Lay-Men or Ecclesiasticks In Virtue of this civil Power over the Persons of Ecclesiasticks he can command them faithfully to discharge their Spiritual Functions 2. In the Subordination of Ecclesiastical Courts and Causes wherein Ecclesiasticks are content to act subordinately on the Score of their secular Mixtures and Jurisdictions And in holding all this 3. in Opposition and Bar of all other Earthly Dependance especially of all Forreign Iurisdiction and Appeals This Supremacy excludes not Spiritual Ministrations of deprived Clergy in the foresaid Cases This may be collected from their Adversaries Concessions CHAP. III. Remarques on the Preceeding Account of the Force of State Deprivations and Instances of Deprivations alledg'd to the contrary considered and cleared up THE preceeding Account of the Force of State Deprivations is not 1. To deny the civil Power the Cognizance of Bishops and Ministers in civil Matters Nor any Iust Power over Ecclesiasticks 2. Nor to set the Church above the State as the Papal Usurpations pretend to do Nor to mistake or overlook the Condition of an incorporate Church The Deprivation of Abiathar by Solomon considered and cleared As also the frequent Depositions of the Jewish High Priests by the Roman Governours And of the Greek Patriarchs by the Turks And of the Popish Bishops by a Commission of State pursuant to an Act of Parliament in Queen Mary's Days CHAP. IV. Of Deprivations by Synods in the foresaid Cases DEprivation of Bishops most fit and pr per for Synods Their Deprivation no Discharge from Ministrations in the foresaid Cases as shown by reasons And by the Practice of the Church This is meant when Synods deprive for the cause of the Truth not of other mere Personal â—rimes where the Injured must acquiesce till relieved by regular Sentence â—hat regard is to be had to the Decisions of Synods in these Cases PART III. Of SCHISM CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Shism And of the Schism of particular Members from their own Church in throwing off Subjection and Dependance on their own Bishops OF the Union of a Society which Schism breaks One way of Uniting Societies is by Uniting them under the same Heads These in Church Societies are the Bishops Union of particular Members to their own Church is in Keeping Subject and Dependant on their own Lawful Bishops And their Schism lies in breaking off from them especially in seting up Opposite or Anti-Bishops against them So 1. in such Oppositions the Anti-Bishop and his Adherents make the Schism if the former Bishop was Orthodox and is still Rightful Bishop of the Church Of George the Cappadocian and Athanasius 2. The Unity of the Church doth not go with the greatest Numbers What distinguisheth Meetings in the Unity of the Church from Schismatical Conventicles Schismaticks too oft the more Numerous Party Much less doth it go with Places of Assemblies 3. Therefore in pressing Ecclesiastical Unity Men must be press'd to keep United to their own Orthodox Rightful Bishop not to any Opposite Bishop The Gospel Precepts of Love and Peace c. all on this Side and not to be urged the other way Such a Schism not to be cared by the Recessions of the Suffering Bishops in the foresaid Cases CHAP. II. Of the Schism of particular Churches from other Sister Churches by rejecting Fraternal Communion therewith UNity of one Body to be kept up among all particular Churches This is chiefly by the Union and Accord
of the respective Bishops and Pastors thereof All Orthodox Bishops and Churches keep this up 1. By Receiving each others Members as if they were their own Members 2. And in like sort by refusing each others Schismaticks And Excommunicates And admitting each others Reconciliation and Re-union of Members Of Communicatory Letters fox those Purposes CHAP. III. Of just Grounds to break off Communion Particularly of making impious and unlawful Things or unrighteous Usurpations and Incroachments the Terms of their Communion JUst Ground to break off Communion from any Churches 1. When they put impious or unlawful Things into their Sacred Offices Reasons hereof Faith and Worship spoke of as the great Ligaments which Bind us to any Church 2. More still if they admit none to Communion in the good Parts unless they particularly concur in the corrupt ones too 2. A Second Ground is if they make unrighteous Usurpations the Condition of their Communion CHAP. IV. Heresie a just Ground to break off Communion CHrists first end was to Publish a Religion Next to Incorporate â—â— into a Church or Society for the Profession of it Christian Doctrine the Foundation of Church Society and Unity So we are not Bound to Associate or Unite with any longer than they keep to this Doctrine but are discharged by their Heresie And on the Evidence of the Fact it self before Synodical Sentence This Liberty 1. For the People and Clergy towards their own local Guides and Bishops 2. For Clergy and People of one Church towards those of another And on Defections from grand and necessary Doctrines of Practice as well as of Faith Chiefly when the Ministerial Defence of either is no longer allow'd in their Communion Being thus set loose from their own Erring Bishops and Clergy they are free to Unite with others who are Orthodox And those others are free to receive them Canonical Rules against intermedling in others Diocess c. no hindrance thereto Rules of Unity not pleadable by such Defectors for vniting with them The Guilt of making the Schism lies on the Defectors Should their Brethren come over that would not Cure but make the Breach from the Catholick Church wider CHAP. V. Of the Communion of good Christians or with whom they are to joyn in Divine Offices under a Schism THeir Obligations to stick to their Orthodox Rightful Bishops and to stand off from the Anti-Bishops and their Adherents in the foremention'd Cases As reta â—â—â—ing their Baptism they may own the Schismaticks as Brethren but as being in a Schism they must stand off from their Communion A great Sence of the Obligations to shuâ— the Communion of Schismeticks and corrupt Teachers in the first Times This was most when Charity was at the hight This will bar Communion 1. with the Electors and Ordainers of such Anti-Bishops 2. With their Clergy and People or the Assemblies of their Diocess 3. With other Bishops and Churches who take their part and communicate with them 4. With the Bishops of a Province who turn over to an Anti-Primate or opposite Metropolitane Of Provincial Union and the Rules for Maintenance thereof 5. When Curch Divisions are made for opposite Ways of Worship and Tenets Men will Unite with such as are of their own Mind and hold Communion with those who are for the same way of necessary Worship and Tenets with themselves CHAP. VI. Of Ordinations of Anti-Bishops which tho' always Schismatical are not always Nullities OF St. Cyprians saying the Anti-Bishop is not Secundus but Nullus That Anti-Bishops are real Bishops and their Ordinations are not Null in themselves but were admitted in the Novatians by the Council of Nice In the Donatists by the Roman and African Councils The same shown in several other Cases Tho' Men have Orders yet they cannot exercise the same in Assemblies of the Faithful without the Communion of the Church Such Offenders Received sometimes to Clerical sometimes only to Lay-Communion as the Church saw Cause The Case of the Anti-Bishops ordain'd by the Schismatick Meletius Ecclesiastical Laws and Discipline asserted or abated in such Receptions as was judged most expedent for the Church The Donatists made Schism to take away the Powers of Orders and are opposed therein by St. Austin How St. Cyprian and the Africanes of his Age seem to have done the same which St. Basil disliked in them Altho' their Nulling the Ministerial Acts of Schismaticks seems to be only in the Way of Asserting Discipline and Canons by denying Communion to them in their Churches not that they thought them Null in themselves How the Admission of Ordination of Anti-Bishops Consists with the Bishops being the Principle of Unity and is not against the Nature of the Spiritual Monarchy A Difference as to this between Secular and Spiritual Monarchies And of Local Limitations in conserring Orders CHAP. VII Of the Excusableness of the Peoples receiving Ministerial Offices from Men in Schism rather than live without any at all THis wants the Malignity of Schism The Excusableness thereof shewn 1. From the Nature and Importance of the things themselves Where of the great Importance of Publick VVorship or of Communion in Ministerial Offices 2. From the Abatements God himself has been willing to make on such Necessity in other like Duties 2. From the Practice of Gods People under the greatest Schisms This Necessity being thought to Legitimate it 1. Among the Ten Tribes whose Ministrations were all in a Shism 2. VVith the Schismatical Novatians in the height of the Arian Persecution 3. In the Schismatical Extirpation of Episcopacy among us in the great Rebellion 4. Under the Schism of Forreign Churches where the Protestants have no Bishops Of the Abatements the Church has made where it had great Reason in the Point of Shunning the Communion of Schismaticks and Excommunicate Persons especially before they were Sentenced by the Church The same Equitably Applicable to this Case How both a due Sence of the Criminallness of Schism and Exercise of publick VVorship is provided for by this Means CHAP. VIII Of Communicating in like Necessity where there are some Prayers Sinful in the Matter of them To concur or go along in any unrighteous Petition or Thanksgiving is most Unrighteous and Prophane Of mixt Prayers where the Mixtures are Idolatrous c. Or where some Immoral Petitions are added to a Service not exceptionable on any other Accounts Of Bearing such Immoral Mixtures whilst they do not particularly concur therein but express Dissent from the same and resorting still to the Assemblyes where they are used in Care of â—â—eping Peace and Union Of Bearing the same for the Necessity of having some Ministerial Offices in want of other Opportunityes Mere Presence at such Immoral Addâ—tions no interpretative Profession of Concurrence thereâ—n Chiefly if Dissent be shewn by some external Sign Of these Concessions of favour and ease All highly concern'd to take the Right way in the Points here Debated Unsofe should they take the wrong to trust to the Plea
of mistake and Ignorance Of Zeal against Popery alledg'd therein The Con 〈…〉 PART I. Of the Duty of Pastors to Exercise their Spiritual Powers and to afford the People Orthodox and Holy Ministrations CHAP. I. Of the Differences here Treated of and of the Schism consequent thereon REvolutions of States and Kingdoms when they have put them into the Possession of New Masters are wont to bring on New Oaths of Allegiance for Security of the New Possessors and also to bring on Alterations of Publick Prayers and Liturgies so far at least as concerns the Cause and Interest of the Governing Persons that Religious as well as Civil Offices and Ministrations may espouse and serve their Cause who have got the Power into their Hands These Impositions of such New Oaths and of such Alterations and Ordering of the Publick Worship pursuant to the Design thereof are usually followed with Acts of State for Deprivation of those Bishops and Clergy who Refuse and Stand off from the same and for Substituting opposite or Anti-Bishops and other Clergy that will conform thereto into their Places And when these are executed accordingly especially in much disputed Cases it may be an afflictive Sight to many good Christian Minds in just acknowledgement to the extraordinary and perhaps generally celebrated Merits of Some and in due Compassion to the hard Measure of all the Sufferers But it will be much more impressive and lamentable on the Score of that terrible Rent and Schism thereby like to ensue in such Churches which is so generally and deservedly dreaded and bewailed by all Sincere Promoters of Unity and unfeigned Lovers of Peace and of the Prosperity of the Church This Breach being thus made on One Side The Sufferers will be press'd to Submit in Regard to the Deprivation of the State And moreover supposing themselves injured they will be put in Mind of the justly magnified excellency of the Desirableness and Necessity of Unity and will be call'd upon as Good Pastors who prefer the Flock before themselves to give up Private Claims to Publick Peace and Personal Quarrels and Pretences to the Advantage and Edification of the Church And this Preference of Peace to private Interests they must own to be the Duty of all good Pasters and as becomes such profess to set these things above all Worldly Profits and Considerations being ready when call'd thereto To lay down even their Lines for the Sheep after the Example of the Great Shepheard And 't is not improbable but that at such times they may wish withal that their Admonishes had been as ready to follow this Advice as they are to give it and had like good and conscionable Christians reflected seasonably and seriously themselves upon these Duties of Peace and Unity before they had acted so much against them in rushing Head long as they may alledge into that Breach which in the End the generality see so great cause to lament but which the Sufferers have no Power to Remedy Or that in Just and Necessary Remorse for what they have done they would penitently return whence they are fallen and seeing their Error so unhappily over-looked before by coming into the old Paths re-unite themselves to then Brethren again But on the Other hand they will be ready to put their Brethren and Accusers in Mind that neither a State Deprivation nor a Synodical Deprivation had there been one can discharge a Bishop from standing up to keep off Damage and Danger to Religion and to the Souls of Men or from preventing their being nursed up in immoral Practices and Devotions And that True and Faithful Pastors are not so straightly bound to keep up external Unity and Peace as to keep up necessary Truth and Righteousness and holy and unpolluted Worship in the Church Their Charge is first To provide against all things that endager or destroy the Souls of Men and damnifie Religion and when that is done then to look how they may provide against all Schism or breach of external Unity with their Compastors or Brethren but never seek to salve and secure this by letting those alone Besides as to Peace and Union instead of carrying themselves off from Truth and Righteousness at such times or any good People off from them they will alledge that they oblige all who will make Conscience thereof and observe them as they ought to stick to them For the Unity which Christ requires is to keep united upon the Profession of true Doctrine and holy Worship not of any damnable Errors and Corruptions thereof And under our own Lawful and Canonical Bishops and Pastors not under any opposite or Anti-Bishops and Pastors Schismatically set up against them and violently intruding into their Places The determination of this Debate at all such times on all such Emergencies is both of highest account and of most general Concernment And the design of these Papers is to set down those things whereon in my Judgment the clearing of it must depend and by the help whereof Sincere Christians in such Divisions may be enabled to resolve both what is the Duty of the Sulfering Bishops and Clergy in those Cases and also what is the Peoples Duty and with which of the concern'd Parties Men who desire nothing so much as to please God and to keep a good Conscience ought to unite and joyn themselves As to the deprived Bishops and Clergy at such times the question is Whether not withstanding their Deprivation they are Bound still to go on in the Exercise of their Ministry Or sitting down under it and letting fall their Spiritual Ministrations they Should content themselves to keep United the Anti-Bishops and to their Adberents as Lay Communicants If it be their Duty still to insist on their Spiritual Powers and as they can and at their Perils to exercise their respective Ministrations those Churches are unavoidably left in a State of Flagr anâ— Schism For the opposite or Anti-Bishops are set up against them in their respective Churches as New Heads And if the Old Ones are not only still in place and Bishops of their Flocks 〈◊〉 and still bound to stick thereto and to act as Heads of those Churches each Church will stand divided between Two Heads which drawing opposite Parties and Members after them must unavoidably make two Bodies and roâ—d one into two Churches And besides one having the Protection and Countenance of the State and the other wanting it they must not by divided and separate Ministrations One in the way of an Incorporate Church encouraged by Legal Places and Preferments and foâ—â—â—fied by secular Laws and Priviledges But the Other in the way of a Destitute or Persecured Church stript of the Publick Churches and of secular Benefices and of all Temporal Aids and Methods directing and fortifying the Spiritual Jurisdiction in the Ecolesiastical Courts and left meerly to its Spiritual Powers When the State deprives them they must take up with what is independantly and originall their own and
not expect from it the Benefits and Assistances of any secular mixtures which were derived to them by Incorporation As to this point of Schism several good Minds may think that though by setting up opposite or Anti-Bishops against them in their respective Sees others have already made it yet may it be in the Power of the seinjured Sufferers by their Receding and Submission thereto to remedy and put an end to it And 't is like many Serious and hearty Lovers of Peace and of those Churches may at such times be apt to wish that for the sake of Unity they would do so Indeed where they may be free to do as they please that is when no part of Faith or good Practice is like to suffer by it nor the safety and welfare of those Souls committed to them is haâ—â—rded thereby much may be said to good Pastors not to insist too much on their Personal Rights and Privileges but to forego and give them up for the Peace and Tranquility of the Church Their Spiritual Powers are committed to them not as to Lords of Gods Heretage therewith to seek and serve themselves but as to Stewards that look after it for another or as Sheepheards thereby to serve and Benefit their Flocks Their Powers are all a Ministry to promote Religion and serve the Church by parting with any thing of their own for its good as their Great Master did not to please or aggrandize their own Persons being given them for Edification or wherewith to build up the Church not for Destruction or the pulling of it down Accordingly the Pastoral Spirit is a generous Publick Spirit Nothing is more opposite thereto than narrow private Aims and seeking of themselves nor more required thereby than neglect or denial of themselves for the Safety and Profit of their Flocks and Care or Sollicitude for others It lies as the Blessed Apostle saith in Naturally caring for the Churches In Seeking not their own things but the things which are Iesus Christs In not seeking their own Profit but the Profit of many that they may be saved In making themselves Servants to all when thereby they could Profit the State of Religion and their Flocks though it were by Incumbring and Prejudicing themselves becoming all things to all Men that by all means they may save some And therefore when it has only been a cause of their own Persons or Personal Claims but not of Religion or of the Interest of the Church Good and Holy Bishops have thought it became the Pastoral Spirit rather to receed and sit down under the Injuries than that for their Sakes a Fatal Schism should be kept on in the Church If this Schism be for my Sake send me away or I will depart whither you please and do what the People would have me that the Flock of Christ with the Presbyters over it may be kept in Peace Was what St. Clemens Romanus St. Paul's Fellow Labourer recommended to the Heads of Parties in the Church of Corinth and press'd by the Example of Moses who was* content to be blotted out of the Book of Life to save the Israelites and of those Kings who even among Heathens devoted themselves to Death for the Preservation of their own Countries We ought to endure any thing rather than hat the Church of Christ should be divided Yea 't is not only as Glorious but more Glorious in my Judgment to suffer Mantyrdom for keeping out Schism in the Church than for not Sacrificing to Idols saith Dionysius of Alexandria to Novatus on the division made at Rome If I am any way the cause of your Division I am not better than the Prophet Jonah Throw me into the Sea so that thereby the Tempest of those Troubles may cease from you Whatever you see needful to that end I chuse to suffer Tho' I am blameless and have been no cause of these Troubles yet for your Unanimity and Peace-sake I am content to be thrust out of the Throne and to be expell'd the City says Gregory Nazianzen in his Speech to the Synod on the contest of Maximus Cynicus for his See of Constantinople And we are ready to leave this Prelacy to whom you will provided that way the Church may continue one said St. Chrysostom when at Constantinople others as he complains had unlawfully ascended the Episcopal Throne and thereupon a Seperation was made from him But in Cases where the injured Sufferers are still bound to insist on their Powers and to stand up for Religions Sake and the Churches this way of curing a Schism by their receeding has no place And therefore this Obligation to exercise their Ministries I have fixed the Debate upon in the case of such deprived Bishops and Ministers For if they stand bound in Duty at such times to exercise their Ministrations though never so desirous of Peace and Unity they cannot oure that Schism which others have made by letting their Ministrations fall And besides it 's directly meeting that Pretence and fully answering it I think it plainest to be apprehended and more powerful to operate on the Minds of those who are to be directed and resolved in this Dispute CHAP. II. Of the Immoral ways introduced by a wrong payment of Allegiance THE Bishops and Clergy who are deprived by the State when they cannot comply with the foresaid Changes and Impositions on such Revolutions notwithstanding the deprivation of State still retain their Episcopal and Sacâ—rdâ—tal Powers That is they are as true Bishops and Priests as they were before They are still endowed with the Powers of Orders and their use thereof would be as valid tho' not as to secular Claims and Privileges which are the Gift of Princes yet as to the real Effects of the Covenant of Grace or to purely Spiritual purposes as they would have been had they not been so deprived For these Powers are not derived from the State nor from any secular Authority They are called the Powers and Keys not of any Kingdom of this World but of the Kingdom of Heaven Mat. 16. 19. Iesus Christ was a Spiritual King disclaiming all secular Authority or Power of the Sword and declaring his Kingdom was not of this World nor to be upheld by his Servants Fighting with the Sword And he instituted all Church Powers yea these he instituted before the Church came to be Incorporated with the State and made no new Institution or alteration therein afterwards And when secular Powers turn'd Christians they became the Members of an empower'd Church and were let in by Ministers and privileged to claim Ministrations from Powers antecedently received from Christ and not at all needing to be received from them nor capable of being conferr'd by them as having never been confer'd on them Nor are these Powers to be held only during the Will and Pleasure of the State For then they could not be retained against its Mind And
so not in a state of Persecution when the secular Power sets it self to root out the Church and all Church-Powers and Ministrations Whereas these Powers were given to the Church bearing Christ's Cross and labouring under Persecutions and to continue in it always even to the end of the World under whatever circumstances as well when secularly Oppressed as when Protected Accordingly these spiritual Powers were held on by the Apostles when the secular Rulers declared against their Apostolical Authority and forbid them to Preach any more iâ— the Name of Jesus And by the Bishops and Clergy in all the succeeding Persecutions For all Persecutions of the Church were Persecutions of all Church Administrations and of Bishops and Priests in a more especial manner who were chief Actors and at the Head thereof Yea especiall Edicts and Prosecutions were made against them for being vested with these Authorities as the Title of St. Cyprian 's Proscription was for being Episcopus Christianorum or a Christian Bishop which Authorities therefore would no longer have belonged to them could a Persecuting Power have deprived or bereaved them thereof And this retaining their spiritual Powers will be allowed by their Adversaries who acknowledge that the deprivation of State is no Degradation to divest them of their Character or spiritual Powers conferr'd in Orders but only a debaring them of exercise thereof in their Dominions and in way of an incorporate Church under State Encouragements So that if they do exercise their Ministry there will be no want of Spiritual Powers to render their Acts Nullities or of no effect and validity before Christ. But only want of secular Benefices and enforcements to them and of submission as they alledge to the secular Power or of secular Obedience And having still their Episcopal and Ministerial Powers 't is next to be considered whether they stand bound to exercise and make use thereof 'T is not to be brought into this Question what is to be done herein on Worldly Arguments as they stand deprived of their Livelihoods and way of Maintenance how hard soever this may fall either upon themselves or their Families Which however it may abate or excuse especially to compassionate Natures yet is no justification of things that are otherwise unjustifiable on principles of Religion and Conscience But what is to be done on conscionable Arguments that are to rule their Determinations as Christians especially as Divines or that they may faithfully discharge their duty What is to be done by spiritually minded and mortified Men who are raised above this World and prefer God and Religion before themselves Nor is the Dispute Whether the Ministerial Powers be such a burthen that Men must be always pressing and obtruding the exercise thereof without any regard to the wants of the Place or the needs of the Church Necessity is laid upon me and woe be to me if I preach not the Gospel was spoke in the want of true Preachers when the Harvest was Great but the Labourers were Few It spoke a necessity introduced not merely by the Power of Orders but also by the circumstances of Times and Persons when the exercise thereof was necessary in want of Preachers for the use of the Church But in plenty of true Preachers there would not have been the same necessity nor would they have been bound to this exercise in place where there was no need of their Gifts but the same were exercised by others In this surplusage of Supplies for Church-uses and necessities the Spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets and their Powers must either be exercised or forborn and suspended as makes most for Order and Edification and the Peace of the Church But this exercise the deprived Bishops and Clergy are bound to in Duty and Conscience at such times If there is a need of their Ministrations then to provide for Religion and the Souls of Men or to prevent Men from being nursed up in destructive Ways as Immoral Practices and Immoral Worship and Devotions must be confessed to be To clear this it may not be amiss to consider First What Immoralities come in by a wrong payment of Allegiance to corrupt Religion and to endanger Souls Secondly What Provision good and faithful Pastors ought to make against such Dangers and Corruptions by the exercise of their Ministry First I shall briefly consider what Immoralities come in by a wrong Payment of Allegiance to corrupt Religion and to endanger Souls Whether this is actually the case of any Kingdom and the Allegiance required of them by their New Governors be directed and paid wrong I do not here discuss That makes another dispute viz. about the Right to the Crown contested betwixt the two Competitors in those Countries and the Lawfulness or Unlawfulness of the New Oaths of Allegiance consequent thereupon which is exacted on such changes And this it is no part of the design of these Papers to argue or meddle with But when this really is the case in any Revolution as in this World God knows it is too often or among those Subjects who believe this is their case and that their Allegiance is call'd for to the Wrong against the Right Person Such as these are the Immoralities that will every-where corrupt Religion and endanger Souls whilst such wrong Payment lasts and which should be thought to do so among them viz. Then all that time whilst they are violently transferring their Allegiance from him to whom it still Remains rightfully due would Men in the general Practice of those Nations be wickedly disobeying and forceably resisting Gods Authority or the Father of the Fifth Commandment which extends to civil as well as natural Parents Then would they all that while be most openly and horribly breaking through all former Oaths of Allegiance Then would all who have promised and pay their Allegiance to drive out their ejected Prince out of any part of his Right or to keep him out thereof be actors of bare faced Iniquity and heinously unrighteous coveting and invading their Neighbours Goods And all force used against him or any other Persons for their adhering to his Cause would in Gods Account be oppression and unjust Violence all Spoils and Seisures of their Goods would be Thefts and Robberies and all shedding of their Blood all Cries and Clamours for it or rejoycing in it would be horrible Murders which not only they who acted but they who Wish'd or Prayed for or gave Thanks for when accomplished would be Guilty of All which are most dangerous and destructive ways and amount to a general Breach of Gods Commandments and to an open wast of Moral Honesty and Justice And all these would be the Dangers to Mens Souls in any Kingdom were the Translation of Allegiance such an unrighteous Perversion really and in it self Or they would be met with like Pastoral Provisions as if they were so Dangerous should the deprived Pastors believe and apprehend it to be such
to make Provisions The Work of Ministers and Pastors lies in Feeding of the Churches This Feeding of Ministers is Feeding them with Religious Offices and Ministrations These the People are to partake in but the Pastors are to Provide and Administer them And this as Religion and the Souls of Men stand in need thereof And they always need a Provision of such Ministrations both of the Word of Prayers and Sacraments as may Edifie but not Pervert and Purge but not Pollute those that seek to communicate therein Therefore it lies upon them I conceive to provide and supply the Churches First With an Holy or Sinless and Unpolluted Worship and such as may recommend the Worshippers to God and is fit to be accepted There is nothing that the Souls of Men may seem to need more than such an Holy Worship For the Worship of God is that whereby in an Especial manner they are to serve and please him whereby they must seek to expiate and attone him after any Offences which they have committed against him whereby they can gain his Favour and Aid it not only being the great means of their procuring but also an establish'd Way of his Conveying and Deriving down to the Souls of his Servants those Spiritual Graces and Blessings which they need and long for The Ministrations of Worship are the Ministrations of the Spirit to Minister and afford Grace to those who duly seek it and so will be owned of 〈◊〉 Necessity to all who see what need they have of the Divine Grace and Bounty And since the Worship of God is to stand them in so much Stead they have need enough to have it Pure and Pleasing that the Medicine be not turned into Poyson that it do not affront and provoke God instead of gaining and appeasing him and stop Blessings instead of bringing them down There is nothing also that Religion lies more in The Worship of God is the most Direct and Immediate Act and the most express and open Profession of Religion It is a Service both Solemnly and Professedly Performed in the Presence and immediately to the Person of God And being so directly and immediately concern'd with it in Person he is more nicely Tender of any Prophanation or Wrong to him therein 'T is particularly in matters of his Worship that he declares himself a Jealous God in the Second Commandement When Sin and Wickedness is sent up to him there his own Person is immediately struck at Instead of being Served and Honoured he is Aspersed and Blasphemed by it For such an Unholy Worship Asperses and Slanders him as if he were an Unholy God 'T is a Profession to serve and gain him by wicked Ways which represents him as taking Pleasure in ill Things and being ready to Patronize them fixing upon him our own Violences and making him appear as bad as we our selves are And this is a most horrible Prophanation and Blasphemously foul Aspersion thrown upon the purest of all Beings It is a turning Piety into Prophaneness and our very Prayers into Libels and Reproaches So that if Men would have their Worship truly Religious or such as may truly Represent and Honour God not Disgrace and Bolye him they must take care above all things to preserve it free from all Prophane Matter and Sinful Mixtures As the Worship is of an Holy God so must what is Offer'd to him be an Holy Worship Holiness becomes his House and more especially his Service His Servants must put up Holy Prayers and not have their Prayers turn'd into Sin or their Sins presented to God therein which would turn Prayers into an Abomination And this is True of all sorts of Sins either Idolatry and Superstition or Immeralities The needs of Religion and of the Church require that Worship and Devotions be kept free from both and that neither of them mix and incorporate therewith Immoral Prayers as well as Idolatrous Ones are a Blasphemous Libel upon God and an utter Prophanation and Prostitution of Worship and Devotion they turn Prayer into an Abomination and call down a Curse instead of a Blessing And thus it was in the Heathen Devotions which were not only Idolatrous as being paid to False Gods but too often Immoral and Impure as being paid to Vicious and Dishonest Deities Mercury by their account was addicted to Theft Venus to Whoredom Bacchus to Revelling and Drunkenness as others were to other Immoralities And setting up such Immoral Deities no wonder they should be found paying them Immoral Services and together with their Idolatrous Sacrifices offering up also Immoral Services as Uncleanness Drunkenness and Revellings in their Temples And these Immoralities in Lasciviousness and Excess of Wine as well as the Mis-applications of Worship therein were the most Odious Prophanation and Blasphemous Reproach of God and made them Abominable Idolatries as St. Peter says 1. Pet. 4. 3. These Immoralities whilst they find a place only in Practise if persisted in stop the Acceptance of Devotions And so God told the Iews by his Prophet Amos that till he saw a Course of Judgment and Righteousness he should hate and despise their Feast Days and not Smell in their Solomn Assemblies nor accept their Burnt Offerings or Peace-Offerings nor hear their Hymns and Songs of Praise Amos 5. 21 22 23 24. And the same he declares to them by Isaiah Is. 1. 11 to v. 18. and by Ieremiah Jer. 6. 6 20. And if they have such Fatal Effects when presented to him only in Practice what will they have when presented to him in Solomn Worship and Prayers which makes the Prophanation thereof so much more Staring and Audacious and the Provocation abundantly more Hainous Now these Sinless Prayers free from Immorality as well as from Idolatry which Religion and the Souls of Men stand in such need of it must be the Care of Pastors to provide and Supply them with As Ministers of Prayers they must see that such be administred to them Yea as God himself is Jealous of his Honour in these Services So must they as his Substitutes and Representatives be Iealous for him to mantain and preserve Purity therein And that to invite Honest and Sincere Tempers to resort to Prayers and Divine Service as well as to prevent their contracting Guilt and Prophaning God instead of Pleasing him when they are met there For wicked and unrighteous Prayers extreamly disturb Righteous Petitioners and drive away truly Plous and Devout Minds making them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is in the Septuagint on the Pollutions of the Sacrifices by Ely's Sons that is To forhear the Service of God and to abhor the Offering of the Lord 1 Sam. 2. 17 24. I do not say there is the same need of affording the People of God this pure Worship free from the Company of Immoral Practisers The Congregation of Worshippers or Church of God in this World is like to be a Mixture of Persons or as a Field wherein Tares will grow mixt
with the Wheat till at the general Harvest they come to be seperated and Weeded out by the Angels as our Lord says Immorality whilst only in Practice tho' it Dishonour God and hinder the Effect of Prayers as to the Practisers themselves yet doth not affect Communion or stain the Devotion of others and intercept the Blessing from those good Practicers who joyn with them in publick Offices And this is the Error of those among our Dissenters who have insisted on the Plea of mixt Communions meaning thereby a Mixture of Persons or of good and bad Practisers in Gods Worship and Service which they pretend should be made up of Saints or of Pure and Regenerate Souls Church-Governours I grant in such Sort as may be most Medicinal to the Offenders themselves and to preserve Religion from the stain and the sound Members from the Infection of such Companions are to remove such especially when the Immoralities are Gross and Notorious from Communion by Church-Censurers so far as may be profitably and prudently done in Course of Discipline and as Times and Circumstances and the State of a Church in this corrupt and mixt World will bear But this will be no absolute Provision against them and after all the Church here will have a Mixture of Persons or good and bad to meet together in Divine Offices and 't is not for any to break Communion with it thereupon But though they are not universally to keep out Immoral Practisers yet they are to keep out Immoral Prayers from publick Ministrations For these are offer'd to all that come though only fit to Poyson not to Nourish them And are put up to God in the Name of the Congregation and so are a publick visible and professed Dishonour to him So that they who have the Care of publick Worship must take care to Purge them out of it It will be incumbent on them to supply the Church 2. Secondly With the Ministration of all that Truth which is necessary to be believed or Practised The Word or Preaching of these Truths is to bear up Religion and to save the Souls of Men. And the Ministry of this Word is committed unto them This Ministration must be of all Necessary Truth What our Lord intrusted with the Apostles and in them with the Bishops and Pastors of the Church to the end of the world is to Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded Where all things must needs take in all that are necessary Mat. 28. 20. And St. Paul in Discharge of his Cure of Souls pleads himself pure of the Blood of all Men as having deolared to them the whole Counsel of God which their Blood might any way depend upon and having kept back nothing that was Profitable to them Acts 20. 26 27. For in these Points if the People perish through the Watch-Mans being Dumb or for want of his giving warning the People Die indeed and are taken away in their Iniquity but their Blood will God require at the Watch-Mans Hand Ezek. 33. 6 8. As for inferior Truths which are not commonly necessary for Christians to know and to be instructed in but in their Nature are more indifferent They may be forborn for Peace as need requires and to prevent great Stirs and Divisions in the Church But Truths of Necessity and Importance must not be neglected or given up on such Pretences And it must be a Ministration of all that is necessary whether in Faith or Practice That which makes either to be a necessary part of their Ministration is because they are necessary parts of Religion and necessary to the Souls of Men. And this makes an equal Necessity of Ministring both For Obedience is as Necessary and indispensable a Branch of the Gospel as Faith And Practical Opinions are as much set by as Propositions about Faith and as much Dishonour may accrue to God and as much Danger to the Souls of Men by Practical as by Speculative Heresies Nay many times more since matters of Morality and Practice are more naturally imprinted on all Mens Hearts and are more easy and obvious to all Understandings They lye open to the Unlearned as well as to Learned Men. Yea the Ignorant and Unlearned oft-times continue to see them when the Learned overlook them a little Skill with a sufficient Degree of Honesty qualifying Men to discern these Matters and there not being so much need of Learning in those who would descry as there is in those who would pervert and mistake them And this makes the Mistakes of Men in these Points both more Dangerous to themselves and more Dishonourable to Religion For being so generally known or easy of Knowledge There is not like Room in them for Extenuation and Excuse of Error or Ignorance as there is in Speculations of Faith that are of harder Examination and lie further off which renders Practical Heresies oft-times more Dangerous And on the same Account the Dishonour to God and Religion thereby is more universally noted being more manifestly Apparant and more sensibly Disgusting to the Generality of Beholders Which makes them also more Disgraceful and Standalous And therefore they stand particularly bound to Minister the Word and give warning in these Points Both as what would oft-times more surely and irremediably shed the Blood of Souls and as what would prove more Scandalous in the Sight of all considerate Persons and make Religion more generally Despised Blasphemed and evil Spoken of Particularly it will be incumbent on them to supply the Church with the Ministration of Necessary Practical Truths 1. When Dangerous and Immoral Practices are setting up Especially if they are setting up generally and most People are in danger of being drawn into them As when they come dressed up with Appearances and Recommendations of Wordly Ease or Interests or are driven on by the Arm of Secular Power or by the Cry of a Time And undisturbedly as when they who are in the place of Reproving Dissemble and Connive at them and are Dumb not lifting up their Voices against them These Immoral Practices tho' the Immoral Things are only Practised but not Justified are most Dangerous and Destructive to those Souls who are involved therein And when they see Men in the Ways of Death the Watchmen are required at their Peâ—il to give Warning and to tell them what will be the End thereof If thou givest him not Warning nor speakest to warn the Wicked from his wicked Way to save his Life his Blood will I require at thine Hand Ezek. 3. 18 20. and cap. 33. 8. They are the Spiritual Weaknesses and Diseases of Souls their Strayings and Loosing of themselves in Wrong and Pernicious Ways And the Duty of Shepheards is not to stand off or to keep Silent when these Maladies have seized the Flocks but to shew their Pastoral Care and make Provision for them They are as God tells the Shepheards by Ezekiel to Heal that which they find to be Sick by applying
afford him their Ministrations at such Times As Gods publick Agents and Ordinary Ambassadors their Instructions are to preserve the things of God safe Then they must see to guard his Worship from Sinful and Polluted Mixtures and his Laws from elusive Glosses and undermining Salvo's and the Practices of his People from damnable Unrighteousness and Immoralities And what sort of Agents would they shew themselves should they refuse to Minister and Act for him what trusty Ambassadors should they fail to pursue their Instructions when all these Wrongs and Violences are offer'd to his Affairs and are attempted to be obtruded upon his Worship his Precepts and his People at such times As his Ambassadors they are Ambassadors for Peace and carry the Word of Reconciliation to a People that has offended him And when God and any People are at Enmity by reason of the foresaid Worship and Practices would they approve themselves fit to be intrusted with this Ambassage of Peace or to be Faithful in the Discharge thereof who should not so much as tell the Offenders that God and they are at Difference nor minister and propose from him the true Terms of making up the Breach By failing to Minister this Word when they are sent on purpose with it and have undertaken the Administration of it would they not prove themselves down-right Enemies and basely Treacherous and False to both And is any Failure or Falshood more Fatal as well as more inexcusable than theirs would be in this Case As Christ's Representatives and as Sustaining his Person and Place they are to say what he would say to any Offenders and to act as he would act in these Cases were he visibly to appear and immediately to manage and administer his own Affairs They must come into Christ's Care and Administration when they come to sustain his Person For his Part on Earth as he declares was to Minister to his Church Representing him they must endeavour as they can to supply the want of his Presence and that must be by affording Religion and his People what Ministrations he would afford to them were he among â—â—â—m And this must imply the foresaid Exercise of their Spiritual Ministries in the above-mention'd Cases For were he on Earth at such Times he would surely see no want of these Ministrations to preserve or rescue his Worship from being polluted his Laws from being vacated and the Practice of his People from such Ways of Sin and Death as are then offer'd to be obtruded on them To Minister against all these was his Business when he was upon the Earth and would be so were he to appear again And ought to be the Business of all that represent and appear for him If they neglect the Ministry and Care of these things and let them alone what other Ministries are there left then for them to represent this great Minister of God and Bishops of our Souls in If then they do not Minister his Word to the Church in his Name what becomes of the Communication which they are to keep up between his Church and Him For he is to speak to them by his Representatives and says he that hears them hears him Luk. 10. 16. And if his Representatives are silent at such Times and say nothing from Him that instead of faithfully Maintaining is to drop and make an end of this way of Communication Thus doth their very Office and Station of being Gods Ordinary and Standing Ministers and Publick Agents and Ambassadors and Representatives oblige them to actual Administrations in the foresaid Cases Their Office lies in supplying such Administrations which are the Trust they have receiv'd from Christ and the Business which they are set for He hath committed to us the Administration of this Reconciliation saith St. Paul 2 Cor. 5. 18. This faithful supply of such Administrations is call'd fulfilling their Ministry as in St. Pauls Caution to Archippus Col. 4. 17. For to intrust his things with them as Ministers or Agents is to trust that they will act therein and Administer the same unto his People Accordingly they who have received a Ministry are required to wait on their Administration Ro. 12. 6 7. Or every Man as he hath received the Gift of Preaching or Ministry c. even so to Minister the same one to another as good Stewards of the Manifold Grace of God 1 Pet. 4. 10 11. Thus also they are call'd to Preach the Word and Discharge these Ministrations against Teachers Preaching to please Mens Lusts and against People heaping up such Teachers to themselves that they may thereby fulfil or make full Proof of their Ministry 2 Tim. 4. 2 3 5. And are bid not to neglect the Gift that is in them by Imposition of Hands but to be the Peoples Monitors against the Speakers of Lies in Hypocrisie that they may be good Ministers of Jesus Christ 1 Tim. 4. 2 6 14. And to approve themselves as the Ministers of God by the Word of Truth and by the Armor of Righteousness in the midst of Afflictions and Persecutions 2 Cor 6. 4 5 7. Their Administration must from Time to Time keep up what God would have kept up both in his Peoples Practice and in Doctrine in Worship and Devotion They shall Teach my People the Difference between the Holy and Prophane and shall cause them to discern between the Unclean and the Clean. And they shall keep my Laws and my Statutes in all mine Assemblies or see that all things be done in those Assemblies according to them as Theodoret expounds it Ezek. 44. 23 24. 3. Of his Fellow-workers or Co-adjutors We as Workers together with God beseech you saith St. Paul 2 Cor. 6. 1. We are Labourers together with God the chief Worker And ye are Gods Husbandry whom as Co-labourers we Cultivate Planting what is Profitable and Rooting out every hurtful Weed Ye are Gods Building which we as Work-Men together with him are Spiritually to Rear and Build up or to Repair the same when any part thereof is Broken down 1 Cor. 3. 9. Now when any such Breaches are made upon the Worship or the Laws of God and upon the Practice of his People in all the foresaid Cases God is sure to be at Work with Men. His Providence outwardly throws i Hindrances and awakening Alarms and his Holy Spirit is inwardly Busie in their Hearts by raising Holy Thoughts and Suggestions to prevent the fall of some and to recover and raise up others who are already faln and to set both the Celebration of his own Worship and the Sence of his Precepts and the Practice of his People at Rights again And whilst he is thus Working and plying them both with inward Motions and with outward Accidents or Occurrences his Ministers as Fellow-workers should joyn their Ministration to carry on the same Work in them And how are they Fellow-labourers if at such times whilst he holds on Labouring they give it off How
creditable to the World 1 Tim. 3. 15. As a Church they must preserve the Depositum and Minister and bear it out in their own Times And commit the same to Faithful Men who at the Head of their Respective Churches may hold it on and Teach others that is transmit it down by like Way of Church Ministrations and visible Societies to succeeding Ages 2 Tim. 2. 2. By the Professions and Ministrations of such Societies it comes down to us and by the same ought we to convey it down to our Posterities that there may be no want of that Sacred Depositum or of a Church to Minister the same and bear it out before Men to preserve the Knowledge and Memory thereof and to shew that True Religion has not failed to the Worlds End CHAP. VI. More of the Obligations to Actual Ministration which lie upon them in the foresaid Cases THE last Respect wherein the Ministerial Characters may be considered is 3. Thirdly as they relate to the Souls of Men or to the Church And these also most evidently oblige to the same Ministrations in the foresaid Cases For in this Respect they are placed in the Church of Christ and set-over it 1. As Watchmen I have set thee as a Watchman to the House of Israel saith God to the Prophet Ezek 3. 17. and cap. 33. 7. and they watch for your Souls as they that must give an Account thereof says St. Paul Heb. 13. 17. Now the Watchman is set to espie any Emergent Harm or Dangers before they come and to descry the Enemy whilst yet he is only approaching And this to give Notice of them that the People may not be Surprized or Siezed thereby but timely shun them or prepare against them So that his Office lies in Ministring the Word of Warning Being set as their Watchman thou shalt warn them from me Ezek. 3. 17. and cap. 33. 7. Warning every Man who is in the Way of doing ill and teaching every Man the Sin and Danger thereof that we may present every Man perfect in the Knowledge and Obedience of Christ Jesus Col. 1. 28. And if he fails to minister this Word of Warning as any Spiritual Need of theirs or as any Approach of Sin and Danger requires the same their Blood God will require at the VVatchman's Hands Ezek. 33. 8. and cap. 3. 18. Now Immoral Worship and Practices are most Detrimental and Dangerous to Souls Immoral Prayers Prophane God instead of Honouring him and provoke a Curse instead of bringing down a Blessing And Immoral Practices are Ways of Death which Men must not trust to any Prayers to put by or Atone for till instead of going on therein they truly Repent of the same and turn away from them And when any Guides come to recommend and justifie these to Men and to vacate all those moral Precepts which should make them uneasy and afraid to be found therein then is the Enemy approaching and Guilt and Death stand Gaping to devour them And then they who watch for Souls ought certainly to administer the Word of Warning and to see that the People do not securely Sin and Perish for want of their Blowing the Trumpet and giving Notice And the Blood of those Souls would be required at their Hands should they treacherously keep Silent and fail to Preach and warn their Charge on such Occasions 2. As Overseers or Inspectors Take heed to the Flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you Overseers Act. 20. 28. Taking the Oversight thereof willingly and of a ready Mind 1 Pet. 5. 2. Now the Overseer of Souls is to be an Overseer of their Worship or of what they do in God's House of their Lives and Practices how they demean themselves in those Duties which God will require an Account of of their Faith how they retain the Belief and Profession of his Truths and of any Spiritual Wants or Dangers or other things whereon the Salvation of Souls Depends And the Part of these Overseers is from time to time to observe what their Wants or Dangers are either in Worship Faith and Practice c. and to minister Provisions and Supplies against them Their Eyes are to be over them for these Purposes the Over-Sight which they have undertaken being an Over-Sight of Care and Kindness for the right Conduct and Salvation of their Charge Accordingly as Overseers they are call'd upon to take Heed to their Flocks or to Espye and Provide against any Harm that is coming upon them And when they are in any Spiritual Want either of Worship or Doctrine or of other Ghostly Provision which is in their Power to supply them withal to Feed them therewith or to minister it to them Feed the Flock of Christ whereof you have taken the Oversight saith St. Peter 1 Pet. 5. 2. And take heed to all the Flocks to Feed the Church over which the Holy Ghost hath made you Overseers Yea such Heed as befits the Oversight of the most invaluable Things this Church being the Churh of God and a Church which he hath purchased with his own Blood Act. 20. 28. And this Feeding of their Spiritual Wants is Feeding them with their Spiritual Ministrations those being the proper Food of Souls So that to shew themselves Faithful Overseers when the foresaid Immoralities are introduced into the Worship the Doctrine and Practice of the Church they must take heed both to espy the Guilt and Danger thereof and to supply the Church with better and more wholsome Ministrations 3 As Guides or Leaders Remember your Guides or those that have the Guidance or Rule over you Heb. 13. 7. 17. And our Saviour calls the Scribes and Pharisees those Ignorant and Mistaken Pastors Blind Guides or Leaders Mat. 23. 16 24. and Mat. 15. 14. Now the Business of Guides of Souls is to shew them Gods Ways and to carry them on in the same and to keep them out of such as are Evil and Destructive to them In all things where they are set to Direct they must shew them the Right and lead them on in it as their Leaders in what is Good and call out to them when they are going Wrong and show them the Danger of holding on therein They must not be Ignorant or mistake the way themselves which is to be Blind Guides as our Saviour taxed the Pharisees Mat. 23. 16. And when they see the Right they must not Conceal or Dissemble it but are to be Guides which speak to their People the VVord of the Lord or tell them what he calls Right Heb. 13. 17. And this they must do with all carefulness Seeing that none miscarry or perish for want of Guidance but only for being Deaf thereto and Contumacious against all their Calls wherein they must demean themselves as they that VVatch for Souls and must give an Account thereof as the Apostle there saith Now as Guides of Souls they are to direct and lead them in acceptable and saving Worship Doctrines and Practices
hear them Mistaught by Seducers and instead of stopping their Mouths give way to Gain-Sayers whose Lips did not preserve and keep up Knowledge among the People but suppress and conceal it from them and who instead of Seeking shun'd the Seasons of Ministring the Word and of giving Gods People the Necessary Instructions How will they hope to approve themselves at that Day as having been the Lights of the World if they held this Light as Dark-Lanthorns ministring none to the World but letting it sit still in Darkness Or as the Salt of the Earth if by pure and wholsome Ministrations they did not season the Inhabitants thereof but suffer'd them for want of Seasoning to run into Spiritual Corruption and Putrefaction If they appear then to have been such Salt as did nothing to keep out Corruption they will be in Place of Salt without Savour as our Blessed Lord says or of Insipid Salt And such instead of being set by and carefully laid up he declares to be Good for nothing but to be cast out and troden under Foot Mat. 5. 13. So that all the Parts and Offices the Titles and Characters of their own Sacred Powers do most fully and lowdly proclaim to them the Duty of exercising their Spiritual Functions and discharging their Holy Ministrations in the foresaid Cases And let them but look to any of those Marks of Power and Care which God has put upon them or to any of those Stations wherein he hath placed them and they will effectually Remind them how much they are obliged to stir up the Gift that is in them when they see Religion wronged and the Souls of Men endanger'd by Immoral Worship and Doctrines or by other great Invasions on Christian Worship Faith or Practice Indeed the Necessity of supplying the Church with this Pure Worship Faith and Practice is thought by some to go a great Way in conferring the Ministerial Powers on those who otherwise would not have them And this is the Plea for the Collation of the Ministerial Powers by Ordination of Presbyrers without Episcopal Imposition of Hands in some Foreign Churches But not to examine that here whatever force and Effect it have in that Case of Conferring the Ministerial Powers on those who have them not it must needs be a sure Call to the Exercise thereof to those who have them and are Endowed therewith I do not say all Men are equally bound by the foresaid Characters to exercise these Gifts nor that the same Men are equally bound to it in all Places The Blessed Apostles had General Commissions and were sent out expresly to all Nations Mat. 28. 19. Other Bishops have a more limited Inspection and ought to be more especially Watchful over their own Diocesses having more particularly undertaken the Charge thereof But yet so as to be the Bishops of the Catholick Church and for the Preservation of the Catholick Worship and Faith who are therefore under Obligation of keeping these up as far as they can when they are Sinking and Over-Born in other Places Indeed in this Ministration they are not to stand on Punctilio's of Obligation doing no more than it can be proved they are bound to do in Rigor of Justice But they are to shew Zeal and Affection which doth not weigh Grains but thinks that a Call where it can do Religion and its Master any considerable Service and that the more of this it can do the better it is The Spirit of Love and Zeal is the Spirit which God requires in Pastors to direct and Influence their Spiritual Exercises and Administrations Lovest thou me says Christ to Peter repeating this to him Three Times when he charged him with the Pastoral Office of Feeding his Sheep and his Lambs Jo. 21. 15 16 17. By the putting on of Hands in Orders the Spirit which God hath given us is the Spirit of Love to Christ and his Church and of Power or Firmness and Fearlesness of what Evil may befal our selves in prosecution thereof says St. Paul 2 Tim. 1. 7. The Charge of Feeding the Flock or the Over-Sight which they take is not an unwilling Charge such as will go no further than it is compell'd but requires a VVilling and a Ready Mind that on any Call is free and prompt of it self to Discharge it 1 Pet. 5. 2. And this Spirit of Love and Zeal and Power which is the Principle of their Ministrations stands not upon strict Terms But being full of Care for Christ and for the Good of Souls and Fearless of what may thereby befal our selves doth more or less according as it's Measure and Degree is St. Paul had a great Measure thereof and according to the Degree of it's working in him mightily he laboured and strove Earnestly in the work of the Ministry that he might present every Man perfect in Christ Col. 1. 28 29. He disputed not nicely how far he was bound but would readily go beyond the strict Terms counting whatever were the Over-plus that it was to be expected from this Principle of Love and Zeal in his Master's Cause and would abundantly be made up by a surpassing Recompence If I do this thing willingly or beyond strict Command or Necessity says he speaking of some things in the course of his Ministration which he was not strictly bound to I have a Special Reward for so doing 1 Cor. 9. 15 17. And proportionable to the Degree of this Love and Zeal in others will the Measure of their Service and Ministrations be likewise They will still in any Places be more Active to keep up the Catholick Faith and Worship according as they are more perfect in this Ministerial or Pastoral Spirit And thus at length I think it may fully appear that Christ's Faithful Ministers are on many Accounts Obliged not to suppress their Ministrations but to supply the Church therewith when that is Necessary to prevent a Peoples being nursed up in Irreligious and destructive Ways like as are not only Idolatry and Speculative Heresies but also Immoral Doctrines and Practices and Immoral Worship and Devotions And therefore should those things prove Immoralities which on any Revolution happen to be justified in any Kingdom and are every where Press'd and Recommended to the Peoples Practice and are salved by the foresaid or such like new Doctrines and are brought into Prayers and publick Offices and Devotions in those Countries The deprived Bishops and Clergy in that State would be under all these Obigations to exercise their Functions and to Minister to the Church in those Cases And this would absolutely set aside the Argument from the forecited Sayings of Clemens and Dionysius and Chrysestom and Nazianzen for the cessation of Rightful Bishops to the intruding Anti-Bishops For these Cessations are in a Cause that concerns only Personal Rights not that touches the Interests of Religion or the Salvation of Souls And without examining the Truth of the particular Histories wherein are Errors enough as others have made appear it
Which made them more sensible of the advantage of having these powers quietly and uncontestedly lodged in their own Hands These it might safely part withall during the incorporation as retaining still what it could not part with viz a Power of standing by all Necessary Points of worship and Doctrine and of doing what is necessary for the Souls of Men and as being also fitted all the time in the main with what is needful in Point of Discipline And its parting with them was in way of Compromise and Bargain as a grateful Return for the benefits and priviledges of its Enfranchisement and Incorporation or on consideration of its enjoying a Freedom not only of exercising spiritual ministrations but of exercising them in the way of an incorporate Church viz. in holding Benefices and in being back'd therein by secular Jurisdiction Laws and Priviledges And whilst these benefits of Incorporation are held on in favour of the Truth the cession of the Church in these Points is to be held on too and not to be resumed back again Protected and incorporate Bishops and Pastors must be content to claim Episcopal and Pastoral powers under the recessions and limitations of an incorporate Church Thus our Articles and Canons receive and assert the Ecclesiastical Supremacy of our Kings which contains the foresaid Church-Recessions And denounce Excommunication ipso Facto to those that Deny any part of our King 's Legal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical Causes or his having the same Authority therein as the Godly Kings had among the Jews or Christian Emperors had in the Primitive Church And accordingly in our Form of Ordaining Bishops they profess to think themselves call'd to this Ministration according to the Will of Jesus Christ and the Order of this Realm and promise to censure and punish the unquiet and disobedient within their Diocesses according to such Authority as they have by God's Word and as to them shall be committed by the Ordinance of this Realm But now all this giving up these or the like powers to the State for the sake of this Incorporation and in way of bargain and compromise or other abridgement of its own ministrations is 1. With a Salvo to the Interests of Religion and of the Souls of Men. They cannot give away any thing to make themselves wanting in any necessary service unto them nor part with their powers of ministring to Souls to build and nurse them up in pure Worship Doctrin and Practice These Powers are a Sacred Depositum which if they imbezzle or yield up in complyance they are false to God and to mens Souls and thereby betray both them and their own Holy Fâ—â—ction And their Acts also are nullities wherein they offer or promise to do the same For they are Acts against an antecedent Obligation which are wicked in the making as Herods Oath was to gratifie Herodias in the Baptists Death and the Jews Conspiracy and Oath to kill St. Paul But they are null as to the Obligation of performance as is agreed in the case of all contracts and promises to do unlawful things or things evil or forbidden in themselves They can neither discharge themselves I say nor receive any discharge from Princes of exercising these Powers where Christ requires they should exercise them for the Service of Religion of Souls as I have shewn he doth in the fore mentioned cases In Stewards it is required that they be found faithful in dispensing out these Ministrations as he orders not in suppressing them contrary to Order 1 Cor. 4 2. Necessity is laid upon me and woe be to me is here the Scripture denunciation if they preach not the Gospel or fail trustily to discharge that Ministry they have undertaken 1 Cor. 9. 16. No earthly Powers by confering on them the benefits of Incorporation get any Authority over Christs Ministers to discharge them of Ministring to their Master in these matters For this would be to give the civil power which ought to keep under Christ a power over him It would turn them from Nursing Fathers who by giving it a civil enfranchisement undertake to protect the true Religion into devouring Wolves who seek to make a prey of it It is expresly declared against by the Apostles who appeal to the common sense of mankind Whether they are not bound to obey God rather than men Act. 4. 19. 20. And would leave no ministrations of true Gospel Worship and Doctrin under any Christian state which should fall from any necessary parts thereof and begin to persecute them as the Arian Emperors did in the Persecutions they rais'd against the Orthodox and as Popish Princes did in like violences used by them at any time against our Protestant Brethren or Ancestors Than which nothing can be worse calculated for any Church of God but especially for the Christian Church which is to continue a Church in persecution and to bear up Christian Worship and Doctrin by due ministrations of both when any powers of this World fall from protecting most violently to bear them down And this in all times has been the Opinion and Practice of God's faithful Ministers when the State which by Incorporation should have back'd and strengthned them therein fell to discharge and bar them of their ministrations in these cases Thus God's Faithful Prophets and Ministers did in the Jewish Church who approved themselves glorious Confessors and Martyrs in administring God's Word and true Worship when the State fell to break in upon them and instead of backing and protecting them in those ministrations according to the purport of incorporation fell violently to discharge and drive them from officiating any longer therein Thus likewise Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria Paulus of Constantinople and other Bishops did in the Arian Persecution The civil State had then received the Church into it self endowed it with civil Edicts and enfranchisements And the deprivation and ejection of these Bishops out of their Churches particularly of the Great Athanasius was with State-Concurrence and for State-Causes or Pretences Among other Articles Athanasius was charged with Contumacy against the Emperour in refusing to appear upon his Edict at the Synod of Caesarea And with a Treasonable Design to stop the yearly Transport of Corn from Alexandria to Constantinople on which suggestion he was banish'd to Tryers by Constantine Not to mention the Accusation of his having impos'd on the Aegyptians a Tribute of Linnen Cloath and having conspired with one Philumenus against the Emperour and having Treasonably corresponded with the Traytor Magnentius and usurped the Imperial Prerogative by holding the Festival Dedication of the great Church of Alexandria without the Emperours Warrant and the like And his Deposition and Gregories and Georges Advancement to his See by Synods were seconded by Acts of State having the Approbation and Justification of the Emperors and the Assistance of Prefects as well as the ‖ Imperial Letters violently forcing one out of the
Episcopal Throne and giving the other Possession thereof and barbarously enforcing submission and adherence to them from the Clergy and People as was done by Philagrius Syrianus and Heraclius to omit others But these Stateinhibitions and deprivations coming on him his Adherents not for any other Crimes alledged which were shameless Falshoods and assumed meerly as pretences but in reality only for his being a stout Asserter of the Orthodox Faith he still went on preaching and ministring the same and for all these State-ejections was stuck to therein by the faithful Aegyptians and by the Orthodox in all other places And thus also our own Ancestors continued to do on the States turning upon them and under Forfeiture of Incorporation and all the Penalties of a Bloody Persecution forbidding them to go on administring the Word and Worship of God according to the Reformation thereof made by King Edward in Queen Maries time For being to administer this Word and Worship in duty to God and in care of Souls they set light by the Benefits of Incorporation and civil Advantages and paid no regard to State-deprivations or inhibitions but went on faithfully to administer the same though at the â—eril of their Lives I Grant the desire of keeping on the publick benefits of incorporation may many times be a Reason for Bishops and Ministers voluntarily to rest under State-deprivations and inhibitions when 't is a Case only of personal rights and priviledges Such deprivations and inhibitions often affect persons only and not things when on the deprivation of one the same Ministrations would be kept up by others As was done in the depositions of High-Priests so common in later times among the Jews and of Patriarks so ordinary at present among the Greeks and may happen in other places In all which there is only a change of persons but no change in ministrations the Church being lead on in the same necessary Worship Doctrine and Practice under both And here to prevent a breach with the state and to keep on the way of spiritual ministrations with the benefit of Secular Accessions the Bishops and Pastors of an incorporate Church where it is not like to do the Church more hurt by an utter loss of its liberty in these points than the incorporation desired will compensate may think there is more cause for the Churches sake to rest under state-deprivations They may esteem it their parts to quit their own particular interests to advance the Churches and believe that the keeping on the publick benefits of incorporation will abundantly compensate for the wrongful encroachment made by such deprivation on a private person But in Cases which concern not only the personal rights and priviledges of Pastors but the substance of Religion or the safety of Souls and where Christ requires they should exercise their ministrations as I have shewn he doth in the foresaid Cases They must not let them fall in regard to any inhibitions or deprivations even of their Lawful Princes They must here slight all worldly benefit of protection and be willing if need require to undergo a persecution And go on faithfully in their ministrations as their bounden duty requires and as in these Cases Gods Faithful Ministers have done in all times 2. Secondly what is so given up by the Church for abridgement of its own power in spiritual ministrations is only whilst it keeps united to the state and receives protection not when it is separated from it again or falls under persecution Its recessions as I noted were on consideration of State benefits and as a grateful return for them whilst it was suffer'd to enjoy them They are all upon the score of its union and so cease when the State breaks off and turns it up to it self again For being made separate it is no longer under any former tyes of incorporation but acts again with the powers of a separate condition And thus it is when instead of protecting the State puts any necessary points of Doctrine or Worship or part of their ministration under persecution When it separates its protection it separates it self It drives out the Church when it drives out any of those things which the Church must stick to at all perils and when instead of incorporating or civilly protecting the ministrations thereof it falls to incorporate and to protect the ministration of error and wickedness in their place It disfranchises pure Worship and Doctrine when it enfranchises errors and corruptions contrary to them And by turning to persecute the necessary ministrations of pure Religion it breaks it self from them and thence forward they are no longer one but become two again So that whatever regard and complyance the Bishops and Ministers of Christ may shew to such deprivations and inhibitions of the State whereinto they are incorporated whilst it inhibits no necessary Ministrations to Religion or to the Souls of Men but in discharging all those they injoy the priviledges and protection thereof Yet are they not to be discharged thereby from ministring to the same in all the foresaid or other like Cases nor to be debarr'd of any of their spiritual powers after once the state breaks with them and instead of yielding them the benefits of incorporation puts them under persecution But then they must exercise these ministrations only according to what they have Received from Christ and from the Canons of the Church so far as they do not interfere with any innocent State Laws which restrain them as Good Subjects Not with any Civil fortifications and State Accessions CHAP. II. Of the Kings Ecclesiastical Supremacy Received and Asserted by our Church ANd all this agrees well with the Ecclesiastical Supremacy own'd by our Church and claimed by our Princes conformable to what was ascribed to and claimed by the Godly Kings among the Jews and the Godly Emperors in the Primitive Church Whose Ecclesiastical Soveraignty lyes not in their being invested with or in their having a Soveraign Disposal of the Powers of Orders But in retaining their Civil Soveraignty over all persons whether Laymen or Ecclesiasticks And in the subordination of Ecclesiastical courts and causes which are content to act in subordination on the score of their secular mixtures as in beneficiary matters censures c. And for Cognizance of either of these either of persons or causes in barring all Foreign Appeals 1. First It lyes not I say in their being invested with or having a Soveraign Disposal of the powers of orders For these our Kings do not pretend to have in their power or to be powers subjected and inherent in themselves But to be proper and Peculiar to spiritual persons Thus King Henry the eighth when he asserts his own Regal Supremacy over the Church leaves all proper spiritual powers and Functions to spiritual persons and in the statute for restraint of Appeals declares the spiritualty sufficient and meet to declare and determine all such doubts and to administer all such
offices and dutys as to their Rooms Spiritual doth appertain And Queen Elizabeths injunctions disclaim all challenging of any Authority and Power of Ministry of Divine Service in the Church by Vertue of the Supremacy And the 37th Article of Religion declares That thereby we give not our Princes the ministring either of God's Word or of the Sacraments And the Statute of Queen Elizabeth says The Oath of Supremacy shall be taken and expounded in such form as is set forth in the Queens Admonition annexed to her Injunctions They are the Ministers of God in their Dominions as St. Paul says But that is as Kings not as Priests So that the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical Matters doth not imply the Power of the Keys which the King has not says Mr. Mason And by the Supremacy we do not attribute to the King the power of the Keys or Ecclesiastical Censures as Bishop Andrews observes We never gave our Kings the power of the Keys or any part of either the Key of Order or the Key of Jurisdiction purely spiritual says Bishop Bramhall And this bounding of their Claims and Pretences of Power is suitable to what we find among those Godly Jewish Kings and Christian Emperors to whom our Churches Articles and Canons about Supremacy refer As to the Jews it appertaineth not unto thee O Uzziah to burn incense unto the Lord but to the Priests that are consecrated thereto say the Priests to King Uzziah when he would assume to himself the Priests Office for which God miraculously smote him with a Leprosie upon the place 2 Chron. 26. 16 18 19 20. And the Lord hath chosen you to stand before him to serve and minister unto him and to burn incense says King Hezekiah to the Levites 2 Chron. 29. 11. And the like appears of the godly Christian Emperors who were told by their Holy Bishops and profess'd of themselves That they were no Priests and that their power of Empire did not swallow up the Sacerdotal powers God hath intrusted the Affairs of the Kingdom in your hands but those of the Church in ours And as we may not lawfully take upon us to act as Kings so neither have you Authority O Emperor to burn incense or usurp the Priests Office said the Great Hosius in his Epistle to the Emperor Constantius To you it appertains externally to punish but to us to judge and determine what is Heretical and impious say Elusius and Sylvanus and the other Bishops to the same Constantius The Royal Purple makes men Emperors but it doth not make them Priests says St. Ambrose to the Emperor Theodosius As Christians and Godly Emperors they used their Imperial Power and Soveraignty about Church-Matters But that was not privative to deny the Pastors of the Church or to bereave them of their Power but Cumulative to add the Imperial Power which was of another kind to the Spiritual thereby to back their Acts and to make them bind the faster Thus when they sent Count Candidianus to the Great Council of Ephesus the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian declare in their Letter to the Council That it was to keep good Order and to see fair Debates but with Orders not to intermeddle in determining Questions of Faith and Ecclesiastical Matters which say they is lawful only for the Bishops And when the Emperor Marcian came in person at the passing the Definitions of the Great Council of Chalcedon it was not as he tells them in his Speech to the Council to make Demonstration of his own Power therein but to give greater firmness to what they had done in the Exercise of theirs Which he doth by Ratifying the same by secular Penalties as by Banishment of Citizens Disbanding of Souldiers and Deposition of Clery and by other Punishments after the Determinations of the Council had been read and the Bishops had owned and subscribed the same before him When the Imperial Purple came to confirm a Pastoral Act it gave a new Authority to that which had Authority in it self before or as Justinian speaks in his Confirmation of the Episcopal Sentence or Anathemaon Zoaras which says he having a validity from it self or Authenticalness of its own the Crown makes yet more valid or of more Authority by adding to it a secular Penalty The Episcopal or Spiritual Authority is by too many unjustly slighted and therefore the Secular Authority is both humbly call'd in and piously comes in to its help since those irreligious Contemners of the Spiritual Power will stand more in awe of the Secular Coming in by their Secular Authority to help and back the Church in those things wherein men would otherwise contemn the Authority of the Bishops as the Fathers express it in the Council of Carthage So that the Imperial Power even whilst employ'd about Church-Ministrations all the time supposes but doth not swallow up the Pastoral Powers nor doth its Ecclesiastical Supremacy lye nor was ever thought so to do either by our Church or by those Times whereto it refers in their being vested with or having a soveraign Disposal of the Powers of Orders But 2. Secondly it lyes 1. First In retaining their civil Power over all Persons whether Lay-men or Ecclesiasticks The Civil State was first in Being and men were Subjects of the State when Christianity came to be proposed to them and planted among them The Church is in the Common-wealth not the Common-wealth in the Church as Optatus says And when men became Members or Ministers of the Church they did not thereby cease to be Subjects of the State or owe ever the less Duty unto it Let every Soul be subject unto the Higher Power is meant of Ecclesiasticks as well as others It takes in all tho' an Apostle tho' an Evangelist tho' a Prophet or whosoever else as St. Chrysostom notes And therefore Princes may lay their civil Commands and inflict their civil Punishments upon Ecclesiasticks as well as upon their other Subjects They may put them under Fines or Imprisonments or banish them out of their Dominions or any parts thereof as Claudius did the Jews from Rome or as Domitian did St. John into Patmos where he wrote his Revelations and as Constantius and Valence did the Orthodox Bishops in the Arian Persecutions And true Pastors are bound to submit to this like as other Subjects are either from Heathen or Heretical Emperors and even in hard and unjust Cases as in the foresaid Instances And if any under sentence of Banishment inflicted on certain Persons not on the whole Cause return into his own Country without Leave of the civil Power if being caught he suffer for it he dies not as a Christian but as a Malefactor says St. Cyprian So that Bishops and Ministers are no exempt Persons but are to own their Kings as their civil Soveraigns and are as much bound to pay Obedience to their civil Laws and are
Review from Rome or at Rome for all Matters Ecclesiastical and Temporal Ecclesiastical by his Bishops Temporal by his Judges says Bishop Bramhall So that the Legal Supremacy of our Kings in spiritual Matters lyes in their power of doing them all without any Interposition of Forreign Bishops who are none of their Subjects by their own Bishops and Clergy whom they can command and compel to do their duties therein as their civil Soveraigns And this way the civil Soveraignty doth not drown or swallow up the spiritual powers of Ecclesiasticks but supposes them all the while peculiarly and immediately vested therewith But only retains its own secular power over their Persons as well as others whereby it can oblige them to a due discharge of their sacred powers according to the Rules of their spiritual Functions as occasion requires It lyes moreover 2. Secondly In the Subordination of Ecclesiastical Courts and Causes wherein Ecclesiasticks are content to act subordinately on the score of their secular mixtures and jurisdictions as in Beneficiary Matters Censures and other things of that Cognizance To give more leisure and encouragement to the Ministers of Religion in attending their spiritual Administrations the civil State has endowed their spiritual Cures with temporal Benefices or Preferments And to beget a greater Regard and a more general and aweful Observance of Ecclesiastical Determinations the civil power as I before observed is annexed and mingled with the spiritual in these Causes and a Concurrence is therein made of Temporal and Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions The Matters cognizable there are not only mere spiritual but some of them of a temporal Nature Such are all Causes Testamentary or about Wills the Causes of Matrimony and Divorces and those about Right of Tythes Oblations and Obventions the Knowledge whereof by the goodness of Princes of this Realm says the Statute for Restraint of Appeals and by the Laws and Customs of the same appertaineth to the spiritual Jurisdiction of this Realm And the Canons and Rubricks which are to rule all Proceedings are not only the Prescriptions of Bishops and Priests but Royal and civil Injunctions Like as also the Antient Canons were by the piety of the Primitive Emperors We decree that the holy Ecclesiastical Canons either those passed in the four General Councils or those confirmed by them be in place of Laws says the Emperor Justinian Our own Laws will have the Divine Canons not to be of less force or effect than Laws and what the sacred Canons forbid that also do our Laws coerce and abolish says the Code And as it was in the case of those Antient Canons under those Emperors so in case of ours too under our Kings the Judgments and Sentences upon them rest not in mere spiritual but draw on temporal Effects and Incapacites which effect the Sufferers in their Persons and Estates as well as in their spiritual Concerns As subjecting them to a Writ of Imprisonment rendring them uncapable to commence or carry on a Suit at Law or the like Now for the favour of this State-Concurrence in all these Causes that under the Union of two such different Powers there may be no clashing the Church submits to act in subordination and the King in all these Causes and mixt Jurisdictions is supreme That is no Synod of Ecclesiasticks is to meet for making Canons or Constitutions but when by his Writ he convenes them Nor are any Agreements of theirs when assembled to be publish'd as Canons or Ordinances till he approves or ratifies them Nor any of those introduced formerly to be executed and put in use further than they consist with the Kings prerogative Royal and with the Laws Customs and Statutes of the Realm All which are provided for in the Statute of Submission And when Canons are thus made by his Ratification it submits also that in certain Cases which are declared by other Acts they may be relaxed by his Royal Dispensation and that as in making Canons so also in granting Dispensations from them he shall be supreme That no Persons shall be elected Bishops of beneficed and temporally endowed Churches but who have the Kings Letters missive as is provided in another Statute or who are of his Nomination That when Ecclesiasticks sit to judge in their Courts by those Laws all their Proceedings in that Judicature shall be subject to the Kings Prohibition to stop their further hearing of a Cause which by Allowance or Custom is of another Cognizance or to his Commission of Review upon Appeals made to him after they have given sentence So that in these Courts there is a subjection and subordination to the King both as to the Laws they proceed by which are the Kings Laws as not passing or being introduced without his Approbation or Sufferance and as to the Judgments there passed according to them And because of this subordination of the Bishops and Clergy in their pure spiritual Jurisdictions for the Civil Soveraigns addition of such Temporal or State Concurrence the King is declared supream in all these Causes Thus much is declared in the Passages already mention'd from the Statutes settling the Kings supremacy And thus 't is said in another Statute of the Review of the Institution of a Christian Man that King Henry 8th set it forth as supream Head of the Church of England because he call'd the Convocation together to frame and publish â—â— by his Consent And thus in his Declaration prefix'd to the 39 Articles of Religion King Charles the First sets forth his supremacy over the Church by this subordination of the Church-men and because in making any Canons or Constitutions they must have his License for their Assembling and their Orders and Agreements confirmed by his Approbation and executed all with subordination to the Laws and Customs of the Land for preservation whereof they are subject to the Temporal Prohibition And in respect of both these parts of civil power viz Both in having this civil command of spiritual persons and this civil power over spiritual causes by reason of such secular mixtures it lyes moreover in having the same 3. Thirdly in opposition and bar of all other earthly dependance especially of all Foreign jurisdiction and appeals He is the one Supream Head of all both Spiritual and Temporal next under God saith the Statute for Restraint of Appeals And the claim of Supremacy in the Queens injunctions is so as no other Foreign Power shall or ought to have any Superiority over them And the Thirty Seventh Article of Religion the first of King James the Firsts Canons and especially the Oath of Supremacy doth most fully disclaim and exclude all Foreign jurisdiction herein And the extending of the Kings Power of Judicature over all Persons Ecclesiasticks as well as others thereby is for excluding all Foreign Powers from being Judges in our Kings Dominions as we heard from King James's Apology for the Oath of Allegiance The Foreign jurisdiction and
Bishops and Heads of Union in those dioceses according to his Rules and Principles of Union And then how shall a mere command of state dissolve the tye made by him or break communion betwixt their Bishop and them Whilst Christ by conscionable obligations of Church Unity bids them adhere to their Bishop and keep one with him must they give ear to the state that bids them divide from him I think on second thoughts he will not make Church Union or the dependance of people on their Bishops so unsettled or precarious a thing as either to have no fixt and conscionable principles ingaging and holding all good Members thereto of its own or to have it in the power of a secular state when it pleases to set them aside and over-rule them CHAP. III. Remarques on the Preceding Account of the Force of State-Deprivations and instances of Deprivations alledg'd to the contrary consider'd and clear'd up FRom what I have said in the foregoing Chapters about the power of the Civil State and the effect of its Deprivations I think it may appear that the Bishops and Ministers of Christ continue still invested with their Ministerial Powers and can receive no discharge from the exercise thereof in the formention'd Cases by any State Deprivations And of this I observe from what has been hitherto discoursed 1. First That this is not to deny the Civil Power the Cognizance of Bishops and Ministers in Civil matters Allegiance 't is true is a civil matter and most nearly concerns the civil peace Indeed it is not only Civil but also Religious For when men are requir'd to Swear it and in all Churches to pray conformably to it Solemn Oaths and Prayers are most sacred and Religious Acts. And Allegiance in it self is a moral duty for due payment whereof all stand answerable to God in the last judgment as well as a civil or state-duty for which they are answerable to the state in judicatures of this world But it is such a matter of Religion I say as is also a civil matter subject to civil Cognizance or a point of State too And if this is refused to a Rightful state it is not only an offence against Morality and Religion which spiritual Judicatures and Synods may punish with Canonical Depositions But also an offence against the state which such Rightful state may punish by state punishments as it may all other state offences and in Ecclesiasticks when they are guilty thereof as in all other persons And among these punishments by Deprivation though not of mere spiritual powers the state having no Authority to take away those mere spiritual powers which it never gave yet of all that is Temporal in Church-Ministrations so as that such refusers shall no longer hold benefices and preferments or state endowments Yea and even as to those mere spiritual powers it may make them of themselves to forbear any further exercise thereof to keep state-favors and endowments to the Church when their deprivation is in a case that concerns only their own personal rights and priviledges but not the Truths or cause of Christ as was before observed But if at any time or in any Kingdom this should be refused to an Usurping State which has no Legal Right but which calls for this Allegiance Oaths and solemn Prayers and Religious services conformable thereto against him who has the Right Then such refusal is neither a Religious nor a Civil offence neither against God nor Gods Vicegerent Divine or Humane Laws but a due obedience to both And this brings on the Case of all the foresaid immoralities Damnifying Religion and endangering Souls wherein faithful Bishops and Clergy whatever they incur by standing to their Spiritual Ministrations must not let them fall â—n regard to any Deprivation of Usurping Powers Nay nor in regard to the most rightful States should they issue out against them state-deprivations to stop their Ministrations against any such like immoralities or other irreligious and endangering ways And this Limitation of the regard they ought to have to his deprivation is not to deny the Rightful Civil Soveraign any part of his just power over Ecclesiasticks But only to deny him such a power as would leave our Saviour Christ himself who is his Master as well as theirs â—o have no power over them Or such a power as should enable him to discharge them of what Christ has given in charge to them to take away what powers he confers or to loose what he has tyed on But under all this discharge of their foresaid Ministrations notwithstanding his inhibitions and deprivations it allows the Civil Magistrate as much Power over their persons to mulct banish or put them to death on just cause as they are his Subjects as over any others And to have power also over the mixt way of administrations so as to be able to deprive them though not of all exercise of their spiritual powers yet from holding or exercising them with Temporal jurisdictions effects and priviledges after the way of an incorporate Church And to have those other foremention'd Prerogatives of conveneing Synods passing Canons sending prohibitions to stop any process in prejudice of the Prerogative or of the Laws c. Which for the favor and continuance of those secular mixtures have accrued by incorporation and belong to Christian Kings And these things which are allow'd are as much as any of them can claim of Ecclesiasticks as they are Kings And on the other side those things which are denyed are such as they would abhor to challenge or desire who would own any subjection to Christ or bound their pretensions as Christian Kings 2. Secondly nor is it to set the Church above the State as the Papal Usurpation pretended to do But only to set Almighty God and his blessed Son Jesus Christ above it Not leaving subjects whether Laicks or Ecclesiasticks in complyance with any the most rightful state to disobey God Nor Ministers to let fall any Services and Ministrations of Religion or cure of Souls which Christ calls them to exercise yea not only when the state is consenting but when it gain-says it and doth all it can either to disable or discourage them from it he not having thought fit to stand to the courtesy of any civil state whether or no the Ministry of saving Souls should be prosecuted and whether he should be served and have a Church on Earth But at the same time it sets God and Religion above their Power it subjects all both Laicks and Ecclesiasticks to the same in other things Allowing every rightful civil state the chief civil power over all Ecclesiastical Persons And the chief civil power over all Ecclesiastical Causes so far forth and so long as they are mixed and compounded with civil benefices and jurisdictions And a civil power to compel Church Men by civil penalties to do the duty of their Spiritual Ministrations and to hold them under a necessity of not resisting by Arms but of
suffering with patience under them when they punish and persecute them not for breaking but for faithfully performing of the same And this is to leave the civil power to be chief in all civil matters and to have several Prerogatives of Soveraignty in spiritual so long as they proceed with civil mixtures That is to be supream in all which it can call its own Though at the same time it is not to be held superior to Christ nor must be thought intrusted with the Supreme Disposal of the matters of Religion wherein men are empower'd of Christ by another sort of Commission And from all these 't is plain that it is no Revival of the abolished Papal Usurpations For these lay not in the Bishops asserting as is aforesaid of their own pure spiritual powers or of their own indefeasible obligations notwithstanding any state inhibitions and deprivations to exercise them for the service of Religion and the Church as Christ requires they should in the foremention'd and other like Cases For this is no more than has been done by the Holy Apostles and by all faithful Bishops and Ministers in all Ages But in their claiming an independancy on the state in the exercise of spiritual powers and Ministrations mixed and endowed with the borrowed adjuncts of secular benefices and jurisdictions And in their professing a dependance therein upon the Pope seeking to him for investitures and confirmations and making him the last judge by Appeals As also depending on him for conveneing Synods for passing and confirming Canons and granting dispensations from them and for other Matters which for their civil endowments of Churches were granted to Christian Princes and by incorporation accrued to the Crown And Lastly in their Challenging an Exemption of their persons from Civil Cognizance so as not to be answerable in Civil Courts and Coercible there by civil penalties even for state-matters and offences And the Retrenching of these Usurpations was the business of our Reformers But as for the independance of the Ecclesiasticks mere spiritual powers and their obligations to exercise them in any Case as may answer the Command of Jesus Christ and not the contrary inclination or inhibition of the Civil Magistrate they were as far from intending as from needing to Reform it Yea soon after they were most glorious Asserters thereof in all their Ministrations for the service of Souls and for the support of Truth which they discharged against the deprivations and inhibitions of the state as Confessors and Martyrs during all the persecutions of Queen Marys Reign 3. Thirdly Nor is this to mistake or to over-look the condition of an incorporate Church But only not to over-value the Civil Benefits of Incorporation and at the same time to under-value their Obligations to Christ to the Ministeries of Religion and to the Souls of Men. It is necessary that Pastors and People should keep obedient and true to Christ But it is not necessary that they should keep in the favour of Princes and continue a Church incorporate Nay it is necessary they should cheerfully take up the Cross and be content to be a Church persecuted when they can no longer enjoy the secular benefits of Incorporation without yielding to an irreligious and ill Ministration nor hold on Ministring to the necessary service of Souls and of pure Religion without incurring Persecution For then all Church-men of any Fidelity or Conscience must shew themselves Ministers of Christ not of Princes and Guides that watch for Souls not for Benefices and secular accessions And like their Great Master and all good and holy Bishops who were call'd by him as we all are to spiritual Ministeries under whatever Persecutions of Princes despise all state-favors and preferments in this world in comparison of fulfilling that Spiritual Ministry and most sacred Trust which they have received from the Lord and whereof one day they must give a most strict account And therefore it is a very ill-grounded reasoning which the aforesaid Author of the Vindication of their Majesties-Authority c. uses to Authorize the deprivation of suffering Bishops at such times for state-matters by a mere Act of State thinking it well proved if it is as certain aâ—d evident as that the Church is and must be incorporated into the State For in the aforesaid Cases for the service of Christ and the sake of Religion and of Souls the Church is bound to break with the State and to lay aside all thoughts of continuing incorporated and submit to be persecuted It is then call'd to bear Christs Cross for its stedfastness in his Service and Ministrations not to seek or court state-favors by ceasing to Minister what is good or consenting to Minister what is ill in complyance with Princes And if instead of being certain and evident it must 't is certain and evident the Church must not be any longer incorporate when it cannot purchase it but on these Terms Then in all the foresaid Cases there is an end of all Arguments to perswade acquiescence for the preservation of the incorporation of Churches in Christian Kingdoms But though this Principle of Faithfully exercising their pure spiritual Minstrations in the foresaid Cases without accepting any discharge thereof from mere state-deprivations excludes all over-rateing of civil incorporation or placing the Favor of Princes above the Favor of God and benefices and preferments above the interest of Religion and of Souls Yet doth it at the same time allow to an incorporate state all that really doth belong to it And therefore in these Ministrations after deprivation by a rightful state it claims nothing that came to Church-men by incorporation But it s Spiritual Ministrations Christs Church then discharges without the encouragement of state-benefices and preferments without claiming the convenience of the establish'd places for a free holding of its Religious Assemblies or the guard and assistance of any of the foremention'd Civil Laws jurisdictions or other secular mixtures and state accessions for the strengthning and furtherance of its exercise of any spiritual Functions And what more should they look at in this state of incorporation than to see that as they do not let fall any spiritual service which was not given up nor can be stopped thereby So when devested thereof that they do not challenge any worldly benefices powers or other endowments which are dependant thereupon And this is not to make the claims and exercise of Ecclesiastical Powers by Bishops and Pastors the same in all points at this day in an incorporate Church as they were by the Ancient Canons whilst the Church was separate from the state under the Gentile Persecutions It asserts them the same as to Ministring all that is necessary in Religion and in Care of Souls which the Pastors are as much empowerd and as much obliged to look to under incorporation as before it And to be the same also in other points given up and accruing to the State at the incorporation of the Church as
and private Claims and mastering all private resentments as mortifyed and most publick spirited Men they can make an end thereof by letting fall their own pretensions And why will many good Minds and sincere Lovers of Peace say should they not do this for the Love of Peace and for Religions sake and the Churches Their Adversaries indeed can not have the face to ask it And others who may move better therein would be modest in pressing liberality on Losers and not go too far in urging them who have suffered so much already from the Invaders as if they had not taken enough from them to fall upon themselves and throw them what remains Yet they think it would be a noble Pitch in Vertue full of Glory and Goodness if of themselves they would prefer Publick-Weal before private Passions and Advantages and be full of Care for others when that needs to be shewn in caring least for themselves Which Heavenly-mindedness and publick-spiritedness and Mortification to private Interests God and the Church they conceive must needs take most kindly at their hands But as to this the suffering Bishops can not take this way of Cure by giving up their Claims where they are bound in duty to insist on them And that they are bound to do as I have already shewn at large in the forementioned Cases By their quitting there they would surrender the Souls of their Charge to become a Prey to Wolves and Seducers and to be trained up in wicked and corrupt Doctrines Prayers and Practices And this is not to be true to their Pastoral Trusts 'T is not faithfully to discharge their Cure of Souls but perfidiously to throw it off So that be they never so mortified and negligent of themselves and zealously studious of Unity and the Churches Peace yet in Fidelity to Christ and to the People whom he has entrusted to their Charge they must hold on their spiritual relation I conceive and diligently discharge it the best they can at such times and not desert but stick to the Church over which the Holy Ghost hath made them Overseers Besides the exercise of their spiritual Ministrations is loudly call'd for in such Cases and bound on them and the suffering Clergy their Brethren by all the Powers and Characters of the Ministerial Office as I think may fully appear from what I have said on that point before And not only the continuance of their former Relation as the true Bishops still of those places but this very exercise must in consequence keep up a schism in the Church at such times For this exercise of their Ministrations must be in separate Bodyes The state incorporateing and espousing the Anti-Bishops and their Adherents will give them the Publick Churches And Depriving and Persecuting the other and their Followers will also be sure to keep them out thereof So their Ministrations if they go on Ministring at all as 't is plain they ought must be in separate places and Assemblies Yea and by different ways of exercise the spiritual administrations of one being purely spiritual in the way of a destitute and persecuted but those of the other being mixt in the way of an incorporate and endowed Church And therefore in all the foremention'd cases where the suffering Bishops are still bound for the interest of Religion and of Souls to insist upon their Episcopal Claims and their Relation to their Churches and with their brethren of the other Clergy still to go on in a faithful discharge of their Ministrations this way of Cure can have no place But as the Anti-Bishops by breaking off from them and from those Christian Principles and Practices whereto they stand firm have made the Schism so they alone by a Penitential return are capable to mend it It not admitting of Remedy in those Cases and under such state of things from any other hands And this may be sufficient as to the true and suffering Bishops and shew how little the Arguments from the desirableness and duty of Union will affect them in those cases When the Church is Rent by such a deplorable schism as the precedent discourse shews who make it so this I think is enough to shew who can mend it and to whom alone the lovers of peace and unity are to apply themselves for remedy at such times CHAP. II. Of the Schism of Particular Churches from other Sister-Churches by their rejecting of Fraternal Communion therewith BEsides this first way of Schism viz. of particular Members breaking off unjustly from the Unity of their own Church by throwing off their due Subordination and Subjection to their own Bishops There is a second as I observed above viz. of particular Churches breaking off unjustly from the Communion of other Sister-Churches And this is by rejecting Fraternal Communion with them denying to worship God in their Assemblies or to admit their Members to worship in ours or communicating with those who stand Excommunicated by them or have made a Schism from them Our Lord is not only for having the Christians of every Place of Country to keep Unity with their own particular Church but also as I noted before for having all particular Churches to keep up the Unity of one Body among themselves All his Sheep he has gathered into one Flâ—ck Joh. 10. 16. All the Assemblies both of Jews and Gentiles he has reconciled to God in one Body Eph. 2. 14 16. calling all his Followers to profess Christianity in one Body as St. Paul says Col. 3. 15. Accordingly Baptism which makes them all Christians lists or inrolls them all in one Corporation we being all baptised into one Body 1 Cor. 12. 13. And the Holy Eucharist which is the other Great Sacrament and solemn Undertaking of Christianity confederates them into one spiritual Corporation we being all made in that to drink into one Spirit 1 Cor. 12. 13. and tho' many being one Body as partaking therein of one Bread 1 Cor. 10. 16 17. This Union of all Christians and Christian Congregations into one Society under Jesus Christ makes that Body the Church whereof he is the Head Col. 1. 18. which the Scripture sometimes expresses by one Temple Eph. 2. 21. or spiritual House 1 Pet. 2. 5. or one Family and Houshold Eph. 2. 19. c. 3. 15. as I observed above And which is that one Holy Catholick Church betwixt all the parts whereof the Communion of Saints is to be maintained as all Christians profess in the Creed This Union of all particular Churches as one Body under himself our Lord has appointed to be kept up by all the Members thereof as occasion is but chiefly by the Union and Accord of the Bishops and Pastors who are the respective Heads of those particular Churches This whole Church is made one Body by one Spirit Eph. 4. 4. so the Unity thereof is call'd the Unity of the Spirit v. 3. And one great means of the Spirits keeping up this Unity is by the Ministration of Pastors and
to spiritual Powers and to the Work of the Ministry in their own Churches For Ordination as well as Baptism is not only in respect to the Church of such a Place but to Christ's Church at large Limitations there are as to the Exercise of these Powers as may make for the preservation of Order and Union And in care of Unity and Peace Bishops and Priests of any Church must observe these in acting Episcopally or Sacerdotally whilst they converse in other Churches But having any where received a Lawful and Canonical Ordination they are to be owned as Ministers of Christ wheresoever they come and need no more to be Ordained than other Members need to be baeptised over again So that they are Schismaticks and break this Unity of the Body appointed to be kept up between all particular Churches and their Members who reject the Members or Canonical Ministers of any other Orthodox Churches As they do who Unchurch them or deny Communion to their Members unless they will submit to unrighteous Claims and Usurpations or joyn in unlawful Worship or erroneous Doctrines or who reject their Lawful and Canonical Ministers unless they will receive new Orders which are so many Breaches of that Brotherhood which Christ has Ordained among Churches and are the making of a Schism in the Catholick Church 2. All Orthodox Bishops and Churches are to refuse each others Schismaticks and Excommunicates as if they were their own Schismaticks or Excommunicates And upon their Reconciliation and Re-union to their own Churches to let them in and receive them again as if they had been immediately reconciled and re-united to themselves Which ways of mutually receiving or rejecting of priviledging or debarring Members make that Unity of Discipline which by Order of Christ and according to the Sense and Belief of the Primitive Fathers is one great way of compacting the vast number of Christian Societies into one Body or of keeping up the Unity of Christs Church All we Christians are incorporated or made one Body says Tertullian as by the Belief of the same Religion and the Covenant of Hope so by the Unity of Discipline And when any one Bishop or Church has done any thing We are all thought to have done the same by appearing associated and united in the same consent of consure and discipline say the Clergy of Rome to St. Cyprian 1. They are to refuse each others Schismaticks as if they were their own Schismaticks For as the holding on civil Communion with Traytors is judged Treason So is holding on spiritual Communion with Schismaticks judged Schism They must take part and keep one with the Church And so whilst the Breach lasts must disclaim and keep off from those separate Members who stand divided and broke off from it avoiding those that cause Divisions as St. Paul orders Rom. 16. 17. Accordingly St. Basil lets the Neocaesareans know when they seemed about to break and divide from him and from his Church of Caesarea that if any avoided or broke off from his Communion they would be broke off withal from the Universal Church which held Communion with him We ought not to have Communion in Prayers with any Heretick or Schismatick says the Council of Laodicea Nor ought they who are not of the Assemblies of one Church to be received or allowed to assemble in another Church says the Council of Antioch If he who is not to be received in one Church be received without commendatory Letters in another let both him who is Received and his Receivers be excommunicated say the Apostolical Canons Whosoever says St. Cyprian speaking of the Schism of Felicissimus who had schismatically broken off and divided from himself shall joyn himself to his Conspiracy and Faction may know that he can no longer communicate with us in the Church since he thereby voluntarily chuses rather to separate himself from the Church 2. They are to refuse each others Excommunicates as if they were their own Excommunicates For whatsoever is this way regularly bound in Earth our Lord declares shall be ratified or stand bound in Heaven Mat. 18. 18. Jo. 20 23. And if it is confirmed in Heaven it must stand good and not be thwarted or reversed by any of his Followers here on Earth When the Members among any Societies of Christians for their disorderly walking and not hearing of the Church are cast out thereof they are thrown not only out of the Church of that place but out of Christ's Church at large whereof all other Churches are Members or out of all Christian Churches into the state of Heathens and Publicans as our Lord says Mat. 18. 17. Accordingly Synesius Bishop of Ptolemais in his sentence of Excommunication denounced against Andronicus and Thoas and their Complices says Let no Temple of God be open to them but let every Religious Place or Chappel be shut against them And St. Basil bids the Neocaesareans take heed how they break communion with him because after once he should exclude them no other Catholick Churches which all owned him and held communion with him would any longer own or communicate with them Till they are regularly absolved and reconciled again all other Bishops and Sister-Churches are bound to refuse and repel such Excommunicates as they come to their knowledge Thus Synesius requires of all Sister-Churches and of all Christians to shun the communion of Andronicus and Thoas and their Adherents And 't is not lawful to communicate with Persons out of communion says the Council of Antioch If any either of Clergy or Laity is excommunicated by his own Bishop let none else receive him to communion till his own Bishop has received him again or a Synod has cleared him say the FATHERS of that Council again And concerning those either of the Clergy or Laity who are excluded from communion by the Bishops which are in every Province let the Sentence be valid according to the Canon which decrees That they who are cast out by some shall not be admitted by others says the Great Council of Nice Thus when any Persons or Churches are schismatically or by means of just Censure and Penalty out of Communion with one Orthodox Church by the Rules of Catholick Communion and Accord among Churches according to the mind of Christ and of the Primitive Church ought they to be out of the communion of all Orthodox Churches And if any either Christians or Churches will still hold on communion with such Persons by the foresaid Rules of Union and the Canons of the Catholick Church they are thereby made like unto them and turn makers of a Schism and are to lose the benefit of Communion themselves If any says Synesius in his Excommunicatory Sentence of Andronicus c. shall contemn our Church as being the Church of a small City receiving those whom it has cast out as if Observance were not due to it by reason of its Poverty Let
Cor. 11. 19. They will not be toss'd too and fro by the slight of subtle men with every wind of Doctrine Eph. 4. 14. nor carryed about when their Teachers fall off with divers and strange Doctrines Strange as opposite to the first-taught Truths and divers as contrary to their own former Principles Heb. 13. 19. 2. For the Bishops and Pastors of one Church to break off from the Bishops and Pastors of another A Bishop must hold fast the faithful Word when others fly from it Tit. 1. 9. An Heretick after the first and second Admonition he is bid to reject from his Communion Tit. 3. 10. And when any teach otherwise contrary to wholsome Words and the Doctrine which is according to Godliness from such withdraw thy self 1 Tim. 6. 3. 5. If any teach corrupt and contrary Tenets it is not fit to mingle and have Communion with them saith St. Chrysostom If any foreign Bishop or other Clergy come and bring along with them commendatory Letters testifying their Orders let them not be received or admitted to Communion unless on Examination they be found Preachers of Piety and teach sound and pure Doctrine say the Apostolical Canons And this Liberty for both these is not only in defections from necessary Doctrines of Faith but also especially in general and profess'd ones in defections from grand and necessary Doctrines of Practice For we are tyed to them not only as to Ministers of Prayers who are to lead and go before us in holy and acceptable Devotions which sets us free to leave them as I shew'd before when they corrupt their Liturgies But also as to Teachers who are to give us true Information of all that is necessary in the way to Heaven or to save our souls they being set over us and we being order'd to keep subject to them as Pastors who are to feed us with understanding and as our Guides and Teachers as the Scripture says Now to be taught aright in necessary points of Practice as well as of mere Belief or Fundamentals of Faith is necessary to these purposes For Obedience is no less necessary in Religion than Faith is and a defection from the true necessary Doctrine of either is most dishonourable to God and destructive to mens souls And if teaching us aright in all grand and necessary Points of both these tyes us to them will not their turning False Teachers or falling openly and incureably to mis-teach us in either set us free to go off from them Accordingly St. Paul treating of Servants Duties whose Honour Obedience and Fidelity towards their Masters is necessary to prevent the Christian Doctrines being evil spoken of bids Timothy if any teach otherwise and consent not to the Doctrine which is according to Godliness from such to withdraw himself 1 Tim. 6. 1 2 3 5. And thus also when he gives order to turn away from the false Teachers of the later days the defection of those false Teachers he sets out more particularly in Practical Points Such as were a denyal of the power of Godliness which lyes in practice though still as he says they retain'd the form thereof which lyes more in speculative Professions and Opinions Viz. by being Lovers of themselves or of Pleasure more than of God so throwing off the Doctrine of taking up and bearing Crosses and being disobedient to Parents Natural or Civil and Traytors to Government so discarding all sober Principles of Civil Obedience and being Truce-breakers finding out ways to evade or fly off from the most solemn Promises and Oaths and the like 2 Tim. 3. 1 2 3 4 5. I speak not of such practical Errors when got only among the People by means of some false Teachers privily creeping in and dispersing the same but not among the lawful Pastors themselves as seems to have been the Case at Corinth where some Members had imbibed Gnostick Infusions and thought it lawful to communicate in Idol-fcasts For here the sound may attend on the Ministrations of their Orthodox Pastors though they be to meet some unsound Members there or to worship in mixt Communions Their Brethrens Errors will not drive them to withdraw themselves but they may leave them to be remedyed or removed by Church-censures Nor of such others as have tainted the Pastors themselves if it is not clear of the Points objected to them that they are Errors or supposing them Errors if they be not of dangerous consequence The Guilt of some is neither so gross and heinous as to the Nature nor so clear and indisputable as to the proof of it as it is in others And these may be born or remedyed other ways and must not always break Communion Nor of all other Errors in practice imbibed by the Pastors that are clear and of higher consequence For though the practical Errors are more clear and important yet sometimes the Guides and Pastors abetting them is not full and bare-faced They may not be come to teach them publickly and bare-faced in the Church as the Council of Constantinople speaks in the case of Heresie for which the Church is to break off from them They may shew connivance or countenance to them as the Pastors at Corinth seem to have done in the case of incestuous Marriages and as perhaps they did in the case of communicating in Idol-Feasts but not doctrinally maintain and preach them up And thus also Leontius did whilst the Orthodox kept on meeting in the Arian Assemblies under him at Antioch For though he secretly favour'd and encourag'd the Arians who used a derogatory Doxology of Glory be to the Father by the Son in the Holy Ghost not as the Orthodox to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost yet in repeating the Doxology at the end of the Psalms he repeated all the first Part wherein they differ'd privatelhy to himself and then only repeated aloud when it came to in saecula saeculorum or world without end wherein both were agreed as Theodorit reports Yea I may add that at other times when the Pastors preach them up bare-faced they may do it generally so that the People may have none else but such Erroneous Teachers to communicate with As was the case of the Jews I think at our Saviours coming when the Priests I conceive generally agreed in preaching up those practical Errors and doctrinal Salvo's whereby as our Lord charges them they made void Gods Commandments And in such a corrupt state of the Church till they could have the same from more Orthodox Ministers they were to go on communicating in Religious Offices and Sacrifices whilst there was nothing but good in them with these otherwise erroneous Ministers And were not to disclaim Communion with their Ministrations but to beware of the Leaven of their Doctrines Or in other Points where they taught true to follow their Doctrines not their Practices as our Saviour cautions But when they saw
Doctrine or to be one with them in Error and Wickedness is not Charity but destruction to those who are seduced by them If such defection from pure Worship and Doctrine is their Case the guilt of making a division lyes plainly at their doors In such Breaches St. Paul notes the Dividers from the Doctrine as making the Schism and not the faithful Adherers to it who refuse to break off from it in order to their keeping on with them Mark those as causing the Divisions or Offences who go contrary to the Doctrine which ye have learned saith he Rom. 16. 17. And divisions made by such defection are incureable by any thing but their own repentance and return to their former ways Their Brethren can not heal or close them by following them in their desection because that is to be false to Truth and to their own and others Souls which are all in danger of perishing by straying from the same Nay should they do as they desire and all come over that would only be a false and seeming Cure but really make the Breach wider For the whole Body of Christians from the beginning to the end are but one Church And those Christian Societies which make up this one Church are the several Churches of all times and places All true Christians which now are or formerly have been or hereafter shall be are all Members of one and the same Body as I formerly shewed So that the Unity which good Christians are to aim at is to appear of one Society and Communion with the whole Body of faithful Christians from first to last with all the faithful who have kept to this Unity and are now in Heaven as well as with all who either now are or hereafter shall be in earth doing the same Or to be found united and in the Communion of that Body or general Collection and Assembly of Saints who shall all appear together as one Body that has kept up the Faith and Unity of the Church in opposition to all Heretical or Schismatical Oppugners thereof at the last Day And they are lamentably out and take their Aim too narrow who look only at keeping an external Union with the Assemblies and Religious Societies of their own place and time though that be in breaking off from the Way and Communion of all the faithful Christians of other places at that time and of all that are gone before them and will make them appear separately from the general Assembly and great Collection of Saints at the last Day Now true Doctrine and Worship as I have shewn are among the chief Ligaments in this Body of Christs Holy Catholick Church And if even any regular Bishops or Metropolitanes with their respective Societies or Churches break off from any necessary Truths or Worship of Christ they break off at the same time from all this great Body of faithful Christians of all other other places and times who are all united and incorporated in them and stand upon them And if these defectors appear to make the Generality or great Number in their own particular Times and Countries yet are they but a handful compared to that General Body or Collection on the other side whom they have defected and broke from and who will stand all in one compact Body against them at the last Day viz. the Catholick Church of all Times and Places So that those few faithful among them who continue sirm and stand out against their defection do not go off from the main Body or greatest Numbers but stick to them the Catholick Church of all Ages and Countries which makes the vast Body and infinitly the greatest Number being in reality with them The Catholick Church consisting of our Saviour Christ of Apostles and Prophets Martyrs and Confessors and of all the truly Faithful who have gone before us are now or shall be after us when all is done will make the Body And those few Faithful Christians sticking to this when the numerous Defectors in those Countries start from it stick to the Body So that as the Council of Constantinople declares of those who break off Communion with their Bishops yea before Synodical Sentence when once they openly teach any Heresie condemn'd by the Holy-Fathers or Councils by so doing they do not rend the Unity of the Church by Schism but study to free or defend it against Schisms or Divisions So at such times they must bespeak their Brethren as St. Cyprian did the Confessors who sided with the Schismatick Novatian Because we can not leave the Church and come over to you which instead of patching up would be to break and divide the Churches Concord and Unanimity We beseech you by all the ways we can that you would return and come back again to your Mother the Church an̄d to our Fraternity By keeping then to the necessary Doctrines and Worship of Christ of the Catholick Church and of our own Church we keep united to them and so far as we break off from these we answerably break off from them And therefore the running in of more into such defection instead of closing up the Schism would increase it It would only make the more People guilty of dividing and standing off from Christ and from the Catholick Church as that contains all Orthodox Christians and Right Churches who are gone before us or are now or shall be after us Yea from all their Ancestors during all the Successions of them to their unhappy defection in their own Church And even from themselves in all their own best dayes whilst they stood true to their own pure Worship and Orthodox Principles Which is such a way of healing Schisms as Rebellion is of remedying Grievances that is instead of taking any off it brings abundance more upon us And this makes the Charge of Schism stronger and more aggravated in the fore-mentioned Cases where the Corruptions of Doctrine and Worship make them a corrupt Church as well as the setting up of Anti-Bishops makes them a Schismatical Church There is plainly a Schism in making of Anti-Bishops which is a setting up of opposite Altars But it is a more wicked and ungodly Schism when these opposite Altars are set up for wicked and ungodly purposes to head sinful and unchristian Worship and Doctrines That Schism is complicated with Heresie or other dangerous depravation of Religion It is not only making a Breach in the Church but withal it is forming a Party against Truth and Holiness It is giving Religion a second Blow to maintain a former and setting up one ill thing to secure a worse It seeks to confederate Men in the Breach of Unity that it may hold them fast in Breach of Piety or Moral Honesty And a Schism so set up to strike at Religion is more impious in the sight of God and of all good men and the Guilt thereof is more flagrant And besides 't is incureable by any but themselves For the Schismaticks run into such
And if any man is disobedient and refractory to Church-powers which he is to the height who throws them quite off and sets up others against them to note that man and to have no company with him 2 Thes. 3. 14. And Schisms or Sedirions the Apostle reckons among Works of the Flesh which exclude from the Kingdom of Heaven So that they who would secure that must be careful not to joyn or partake with them Gal. 5. 20. 21. Especially if to the Guilt of Schism they also add that of Heresie which the Apostle also there ranks among the deadly Works of the Flesh or make Parties especially consummate them by setting up of Anti-Bishops to head destructive Errors or a defection from Gods pure Worship and Doctrines If any turn bringer of false Doctrines bid him not God speed nor receive him into your houses which were to be partakers of his evil Deeds says St. John 2 Jo. 10. 11. Thus St. Paul bids them look to the Judaizers and avoid them Phil. 3. 2. And St. John when he went to bath himself at Ephesus leaped out of the Bath unwash'd when he espyed the Heretick Cerinthus declaring he would not stay with such an Enemy of the Truth as Irenaeus reports from Polycarp Yea and Polycarp himself as he adds refused the Heretick Marcion any friendly commerce or fraternal salutation So studiously cautious says he were the Apostles and their Disciples of entring into any communion so much as of discourse with those who adulterated the Truth And of this Obligation to shun the communion of Schismaticks and corrupt Teachers Christians had a great sense in the first and best Ages of the Church Thus St. Ignatius that blessed Martyr and Contemporary of the Apostles when he bids the Sheep to follow the Shepherd and tells them they who are Gods and Jesus Christs will go with their Bishop to caution them against siding with any who set up against him tells the Philadelphians that if any will turn follower of him who makes a Schism he has no inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven And St. Cyprian is abundant therein When New or Anti-Bishops set up opposite Altars he is full of Zeal against the Impiety and Wickedness thereof 'T is adulterous says he 't is impious 't is sacrilegious whatsoever is so set up by the madness of men in violation of the Ordinance of God He who leaving the true Bishop sets up another Altar and presumes to celebrate another Prayer or Divine Service different from his bears Arms says he in another place against the Church and resists Gods Ordinance he is an Enemy of the Altar and a Rebel against Christs Sacrifice for the Faith he is persidious for Religion he is sacrilegious he is an undutiful Servant an impious Son an Enemy instead of a Brother And having set out these Schismatical Associates as so full of Sin and Provocation he warns all who would be careful of their own Innocence or safety to stand off from the Communion of such Men. A People that would fear God and keep his Commandments saith he must not mix it self or joyn in the Sacrifices of such sacrilegious Dividers Avoid those Wolves says he again who seek to separate the Sheep from their Shepherd warning against those five Presbyters who were then forming a Schism and soon after set up one of themselves viz. Fortunatus an Anti-Bishop against himself at Carthage If they will perish in their Schism let them be alone in perishing Let them remain alone without the Church who have broke off from it Let them alone be without the Bishops who have rebell'd against the Bishops But depart you from such Men and be not ye Partakers with them therein The Lord admonishes us adds he to depart from such Men. And If they are to be held as Heathens and Publicanes who only contemn the Church according to the Words of our Lord Mat. 18. 17. much more are the setters up of false Altars and unlawful Priesthoods to be held as such because they are plain Rebels and profest Enemies thereof And besides their shuning these opposite and false Altars and keeping firm to the true he tells them is necessary to give them the benefit of Christian Communion For whosoever assembleth otherwise saith he than under the rightful Bishop doth not get but scatter abroad If any are not with the Bishop they are not in the Church And 't is a vain flattery and self-deceit for any who have not Peace and Communion with their Bishop to fancy it is the same thing and that they may still have the Benefit of Ecclesiastical Communion by creeping in privately and being admitted by others set up against him Such was the sense which the Holy Apostles had instill'd and which the Primitive Christians had carefully retained of their strict Obligations to keep united to their own Orthodox rightful Bishops and to shun the Communion of all Schismatical Opposers of them or of Heretical Teachers And this shunning of such Communion must not be looked upon as the effect of Anger or Peevishness or as an Expression not of Religion but of meer human Passions which took place in the Church as Charity grew cold and wore off For this was most in the days of the Aposties themselves and of their Contemporaties and their nearest Successors as may appear from the fore cited Scriptures and Testimonies of Ignatius Irenaeus and Cyprian When Charity was the highest as it will be confest to have been in those times they were the choicest in their Communions and stood furthest off from all Schismaticks and Hereticks refusing them the Commerce not only of Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Ministrations but even of Civil Offices and Respect And this by the direction of those Apostles St. Paul and St. John who abounded more than any in pressing Charity not bearing to keep company or to eat with them as St. Paul to give them the common salutation of God speed or to receive them into their Houses as St. John who would not so much as stay in the Bath with Cerinthus nor his Disciple Polycarp give the Salutation to the Heretick Marcion as I observed from Irenaeus So that Charity when at the height was highest towards God for sustaining his Worship and Doctrine visibly bearing it up by the Church and in the Unity thereof But was not for being any ways wanting to a Church-Profession and Maintenance of them in tenderness and complyance to those who defected from them But Christians abated of these first Rigours in shuning all Commerce with such Persons as the first Charity and Zeal for pure Doctrine and Worship grew less and as they were driven thereto especially in point of civil Commerce by Hereticks and Schismaticks growing more numerous and through the lamentable Divisions of Christendom lying intermix'd in all places which render'd the former renunciation of civil Commerce as less adviseable so less practicable in
opportunity of siding and closeing with it So that where they can have no assemblies for right communion the making a shift with the other for that time speaks no opposition against them I grant to stand quite off from them and to have no communion or correspondence with them in their separate ways is the clearest disclaiming of any Schism or Sedition And this as it may be payd so is more reasonably exacted under the settlement of a right Government But under others when the disobedient have got all into their hands and make the number in all places this way of disclaiming by refusing all communion and correspondence admits of some relaxation and abatements It doth so plainly in the Civil State where some dealings and correspondence of the dutiful and well affected with the Rebels which would have been sentenced as Rebellion in better times will not then be reputed rebellious And under like prevalence of Schisms which leave no opportunities of communicating with any else I think such abatements may also find place in the Church too Especially considering the necessity of publick communion and Church assemblies the great defectiveness and scarcities whereof had almost dropped and lost Religion in the Patriarchical Age. And also considering the necessity which our Religion in particular lays upon Communion the Communion of Saints being one of the things professed in the Creed which may make it more reasonable to presume such abatements in favour thereof when there is no opportunity of Ministerial Offices by any others to communicate with But that the necessity of having some Ministerial communion will be an excuse in such case for the faultiness of having this at the hands of one ministring in a Schism when it can not be had from others seems reasonable to me from considering the Nature and Importance of things and the abatements God himself has been willing to make on such necessity with other like Duties and I think it was so held and practised by the Church and People of God when they could have no Ministerial Offices but from Schismaticks and also to give Relief in some other compassionable cases about communion which have only like plea for abatements as this case has 1. As to the Nature and Importance of the things themselves publick worship or communion in Ministerial Offices is a duty more of natural and essential Obligation to pay such publick worship being naturally incumbent on all men And withal it is so important in it self For Communion in Ministerial Offices or in common and publick Worship must both declare or testifie the sence which Mankind have of their common or publick Lord and also sustain or bear it up in the World It is the way for God who most justly claims and expects the worship and service of all his reasonable Creatures not to be left without Witness but even in a degenerate and rebellious World to have some always visibly standing by him and paying him his due honour and homage It is also the way for him to preserve alive a sense thereof among all his other Subjects and Children whom he as a common Lord and Father is concerned continually to make acquainted therewith and to try with the power and influences thereof For by this means he sets forth his worship and truths as a Light to shine out to all that are in darkness and sets this light upon a candlestick or collects the bearers thereof into a body or City and places this City upon an Hill as our Saviour says to make it conspicuous and that it may force it self upon the observation of all who are at a distance And if any are willing to pay this Almighty Lord his due honour and homage it will train them up dayly in the knowledge and observance thereof If they are unwilling and averse thereto it will serve to make them willing by degrees For such dayly representation of God's publick worship and homage before their eyes will be a dayly reproof of their ungodly Violations or Neglects thereof and make them uneasie therein and by degrees awaken and stir up those natural and innate feeds of Truth and Piety which God has planted in all mens Souls though under such Neglects or irreligious ways they lye dormant and seems as if they were buryed or almost quite lost in theirs Or if after all they shall obstinately shut their eyes against this Light so shining out upon them and persist in their wickedness and irreligion it will clear the Justice of an Injured God when he comes to punish them for the same and leave them wholly without excuse Yea this publick worship is necessary at least as to a great part of Men or as to the keeping them up in any considerable Numbers to keep up Religion and Devotion not only among others but in their own breasts For Devotion is to be upheld and improved in our Spirits by exercise which as they have Provisions for and are call'd to so all devout People are careful to comply withal on the constant returns of these opportunities But though we need to use this exercise to keep it on we need use none at all to wear it off our minds which by meer neglect thereof will sink into forgetfulness of what is good and into sloth and indevotion of themselves Their progress therein is like that of heavy Weights up hill which need a constant hand to raise and carry them on but when that is once off have enough in their own Weight to make them roul down again And this all may find by their own experience mens pious affection as any heedful Observer will soon perceive unavoidably decaying and going back back for want thereof Which makes devout minds justly to dread the want of such opportunities for Ministerial Offices as a starving of their Religious affections And for this Reason among others St. Paul is earnest in pressing attendance on Religious Assemblies and cautions them against for saking the same because that would endanger the loss of Religion it self Not forsaking the assembling of your selves together as the manner of some is saith he to the persecuted Hebrews when he labours to fix them in holding fast the Christian Profession without wavering and to guard them against such things as would most dispose them to draw back and apostatize from it Heb. 10 23 25. 26. 39. And for these and such like Reasons publick worship is of so great account in God's sight that he has framed much of our Holy Religion with a particular eye to it and instituted several great and most important things for the sake of it Such is the Church it self which is instituted for joynt and publick worship The Society thereby introduced among us is to associate us in the common worship of that God whom we all confess and the Fellowship arising thence is to make us all Fellow-worshippers Such also is the Ministry which God has appointed for his publick Service or to minister unto
him either as his Mouth unto his People or as their Mouth unto Himself in publick Assemblies or Congregations Such likewise are those set and solemn Times for worship which he has instituted both among Jews and Christians and which are all design'd for publick worship in Joynt-Assemblies Yea even our Prayers which are the Acts of worship express communion and joynt-society being put up according to his appointment in the plural number he having taught us to say Our Father which art in Heaven and give us this day c. which speaks the communion and concurrence of more besides our selves And the Holy Sacraments those most eminent Acts and Instances of worship are ordained for Asts of society and partnership or of communion therein We are all baptized into one body And We being many are one bread and one body And The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ and the cup of blessing which we bless is the communion of the blood of Christ as St. Paul says And because by their institution they are not only to be Acts of worship but of publick worship or of joynt-concurrence or communion therein therefore doth our Church allow no Sacrament even to the Sick without three or two at the least to make a Congregation and condemns the private and solitary Masses of the Church of Rome which are eaten by the Priest alone Such is the natural obligation and such the necessity and importance of publick worship which is one of the greatest visible supports of Religion without which 't is to be feared it would sink and be in danger to fail in the Earth Whereas the paying of this worship in Church-Unity and dependance on a Bishop though it be a duty too yet is a duty more of positive obligation For to have Bishops and to pay all our publick worship in communion with them is no natural duty which always was incumbent on all men but came in with Christianity by positive Institution or particular Revelation And besides though important in it self yet in comparison it is of less importance not only the natural parts of the Ministration but the positive too as the Holy Sacranients c. being I conceive of more Weight And though the want of this Union under our own Bishops by the opposite Passions and angry Tempers which Schism introduces doe greatly eat out true devotion yet doth it not make so wide a breach and waste therein as the want of any Ministerial Offices at all would do Now in any competition of Duties the Rule is that things of positive obligation shall give way to things of natural obligation and positives of less importance to positives of more importance in those cases and times where we can not do both The natural there takes place of the positive and the greater sets aside the less Particularly as to the keeping up Religion and Church-unity and Association if in any case we can not maintain both but a competition happens to arise between them the care of Church-unity must give way to the care of Religion We must look then to keep up as much Church-unity as we may do in keeping up Religion which being once lost Church-unity and association signifies nothing And not begin the other way to content our selves with keeping up so much of Christian Religion as we do in strict observance of the Rules of Church-society and Union For Christs first and chief design was to plant and preserve the Religion And that Church-unity which is either valuable or desireable in the sight of God is Church-unity with true Religion not Church-unity without it and we are tyed to keep up Church-union for Religion's not Religion for Union's sake as I shewed before And therefore the duty and obligation to communicate in some Ministerial Offices will be a fair excuse for doing this out of the way of Church-unity or dependance on our own Bishops when both can not have place And thus I think the Scripture determines in such cases and that 2. These abatements are what God himself has been willing to make on such necessity in other like duties He has not required that men should stick so fast to those duties or parts of duty which are inferior or subservient or appendages unto others as that for their sakes they should drop other duties which are principal or superiour to them nor is he willing that in care of preserving their practice of lesser Vertues inviolable they should at any time let the weightier fall So that to think he will abate and relax something of the duty of Church-union when that is necessary to keep on the more important duty of publick Ministration and that he doth not the the People up to such strict care of communicating in the Unity of the Church as must drop and let fall all communion in Ministerial Offices when they are not to be had but at the hands of those who minister in breach thereof is only to think that he is ready to make the same equitable allowance on any competition in these as he doth on like competitions in other duties And that Almighty God is willing to make these abatements on such necessity and competitions I conceive may sufficiently appear by the following Instances Circumcision and Sacrifice and the Sabbath are all positive duties But Circumcision and Sacrifice being of more importance they were to take place of the Sabbath and whensoever it so fell out that they could not observe both men might be excused in breaking the Sabbath Rest to labour in Circumcision as they did whensoever the eighth Day of the Childs Age which was appointed for his Circumcision fell to be on the Sabbath Day or in Sacrifices with the labour whereof the Priests in the Temple continually prophaned the Sabbath and were blameless as our Lord determines And God himself declares I will have Mercy before Sacrifice which imports according to our Lords allegations and applications of it that Men should drop the duty of Sacrifice to attend the duty of Mercy when for the time they must let one fall and could not pay both So making the necessity of performing natural duties an excuse for the omission of positive and the necessity of performing more important duties an excuse for the omission of less important when there is a necessity of letting one fall Thus also it was a positive duty and rule among the Jews that the Priests should kill the Sacrifice according to what is said in the Law Lev. 1. 4 5. The People who brought it as it is there order'd were to lay their hands upon the head of the Sacrifice But it was left to the Priests to kill it as Josephus relates Whence the Priests were able to give the number of the Paschal Sacrifices at any Passover as they did to Cestius Gallus as the same Author testifies And this is the account of the Jewish Doctors
Images but also in their Synagogues or High Places But now all this Communion of the good people among them was Communicateing with those who Minister'd in a Schism For the Altar at Jerusalem God himself had appointed as the only Altar whereon they should offer any burnt offering setting it up for the Principle of Union or as that which should compact together or keep at one all the Tribes of the Jewish Church and Nation And the New Altars at Dan and Bethel were set up by Jeroboam in opposition to the one Altar at Jerusalem As were also all those other Altars which the people set up and whereat they offer'd sacrifice and burnt incense in the usual places of their Religious Assemblies all the Children of Israel being required every Sabbath Day and at other set-times to hold holy Convocations in all their Dwellings Or in their High-Places where Jeroboam built him Houses for Worship at the same time when he set up his Golden Calves at Dan and Bethel and made Priests for them of the lowest of the people out of which Priests of High-places he took some to be Priests at his Altar at Bethel At which high-places when they were free from all Heathen Idols the people for their devotion and convenience were very prone and strongly bent to offer their incense and oblations as their Ancestors had done in the days of Samuel and also of Solomon before the building of the Temple And thus Prone they were not only in the ten Tribes of Israel but in that of Judah too where under great and careful Reformations of Religion in other respects we read so often of the peoples burning incense still and offering sacrifices in the high-places As under Jehosophat and Azariah and Jotham and under Mannasseh after his Repentance and Restoration to his Throne when though he reformed Religion nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the high-places yet unto the Lord their God only So that the Priests in the ten Tribes offering all their sacrifices at one or other of these opposite altars set up altar against altar and call'd all the people to take part with new altars or to become guilty of a Schism Of the Criminallness and danger whereof they were admonish'd by Hezekiah who sent Posts and Proclamations thro' all Israel to invite and call them to come and keep the pass-over at Jerusalem according to what is written And this to prevent Gods further wrath and carrying of the Remnant away to Babylon whither for this among other provocations he had already carryed part of them Yet the necessity of some publick worship or ministerial offices Legitimated this Communion of good people in all lawful services with these Schismatical Ministers after the division when the Kingdoms being no longer one the people were stopped from going up to worship at Jerusalem 2. It did the same in Legitimating Communion with the Schismatical Novatians when the Catholicks were sore straightned by the persecuting Arians and at a loss for ministerial offices in other places The persecuting Arians were not for Tolerating opposite Communions but for forceing all others to Communicate with themselves Persecuting as Socrates relates not only the Catholicks but also the Novatians because tho' Schismaticks as to point of Discipline and Anti-Bishops they were Orthodox concerning the Nicene Faith But their greatest severities were against the Catholicks to whom as Sozomen sayes they left no Oratories treating the Schismatical Novatians something more gently to whom as Socrates adds they allowed three Churches even in the Royal City or Constantinople it self Now in this want of Catholick Oratories or of Ministerial Offices in adherence and unity with their own Bishops The Catholicks say Socrates and Sozomen resorted to the Novatian Churches and joyned in their Assemblies and Prayers And yet at that time when they did this the Novatians were Schismaticks who having an Anti-Bishop of their own distinct from the Catholick Bishop of that Church and being incorporated as a Distinct Body under him thereby kept up two Heads and two Bodies in the same Church which I think is plainly a state of Schism Yea and those Rigors of refusing reconciliation to those who had falln in persecution on pretence whereof they fell into this Schism at first by ordaining Novatian an Anti-Bishop at Rome against Cornelius they still kept on And by reason of this which they alledged and insisted on as their Original or Ancient Precept they refused as the aforesaid Authors testifie to come to a perfect Union And accordingly the Communion which they both mention as passing betwixt them is a Communion in Prayers because according to this Ancient Precept alledged the Novatians denyed the Communion of Mysteries or Sacraments which are the Seal of Remission which in the case of those who had fallen they would reserve as Socrates observes to God himself So that what Communion the Catholicks thought it excusable to hold with them in this Necessity or want of Ministerial Offices from their own Clergy was held with men who plainly Officiated in a state of Schism 3. It did the same in our own great Rebellion when our Bishops were all driven cut and Deposed with the King For then the Orthodox and Loyal-Adherents of the King and Bishops took up with the Communion of the Parish Churches and thought that for the sake of publick worship and ministerial offices they might do so where they had no Ministers of their own to Communicate with And yet what Assemblies were not only in a more barefaced and wicked Rebellion but also in a more Flagrant Schism than the establish'd and complying Churches and Assemblies of that time So that in the Opinion of those our Ancestors it was a good excuse for having Divine offices in such Assemblies when they could have better no where else 4. Lastly this necessity of having some Ministerial offices is generally thought to Legitâ—mate Communion in those Churches which have no Bishops Thus it is in some Forreign Protestant Churches who have no Bishops to Head and Unite them as our own Churches had not here at home in the days of the Great Rebelâ—ion And yet the people there must Unite with their ministrations because they must Unite with some They must have some Divine service and Religion And if they must have it they must resort to some who Minister it And if they can have no Ministration thereof in an Episcopal Communion they must take up with it from such other as they can have I speak of the case of the People in those Churches and it is not the Clergies but their Liberty of taking up with Ministerial Offices from the hands of Schismaticks in want of others which I am here discoursing of And in their case the necessity is full for their excuse For 't is plain they can not have those Ministrations in Episcopal Communion
of things and with the equitable allowances made by God himself on such Competitions It suits no less I conceive with the Practice of the Church and with the Concessions and Allowances thereof to take up with ministerial offices from one in a Schism rather than to live without any at all or when they cannot be had at the Hands of other men Albeit therefore to avoid the the Guilt of Schism men are to disclaim and stand off from the Communion of Anti-Bishops and their Adherents and not to Participate in their ministrations Yet is that strictly I think on supposal of Room or Opportunity to Participate more Regularly with others But want of other ministrations will be an excuse for the faultiness of seeking them from them and it will be allow'd I conceive to take up therewith from Schismaticks rather than to live without any ministerial offices at all And thus under the paucity or small number of the Rightful Bishops and Clergy their adherents and their insufficiency as is alledged for affording general opportunities especially in a Persecuting time which allows no freedom of open and promiscuous Assemblies will both a Due Conviction and Conscience of the criminalness of Schism and the Exercise of â—ullick Worship and Devotion be kept up and provided for in the Church of Christ. They will preserve a Conscionable sense of Schism by owning the Unlawfulness of Communicating with the Ministrations of Schismaticks where they can have others perhaps on all occasions however for the most part at least in competent measure though not in returns so constant as they wish they could yea and though in these cases they must be at some pains for these Ministrations or have them with Peril or Persecutions I say though with Pains or Persecutions For in such DIVISIONS we must not think it an indifferent thing which Assemblies we resort to for Communion nor hold our selves Free to go among those who are met in the unity of the Church in the Morning but to a Schismatical Congregation in the Afternoon Nor must any fancy themselves at Liberty to seek Religious Offices from men ministring in a Schism when that is necessary to qualifie themselves for some secular office or advantage or to serve a worldly Turn Nor when it is necessary to save their pains or to shun fleshly perils where they might have the same Religious Offices in the Unity of the Church but with Persecutions For in the abatements here pleaded for in the present case from Necessity I speak not of worldly Necessity or of abateing where it is necessary for our worldly interests and convenience or to prevent outward losses and sufferings But of Necessity for Religion and Gods Service for our Duty not for our Carnal ends Or of abateing of the strict observance of this command of keeping Unity where it is necessary to the keeping and discharge of other of Gods Commandments happening to stand in competition therewith which he sets more by And they will keep up the practice of Devotion and the publick Ministries and profession of Religion by admitting the necessity of some Ministrations for an excuse and so taking up with Ministerial Offices from them when they can not otherwise though with Persecutions be supplyed therewith but must live without any at all CHAP. VIII Of Communicating in like Necessity where there are some Prayers sinful in the Matter of them BUT in Communicating with Anti-bishops and their Adherents set up to head immoral Prayers and Practices as is set forth in the fore-mentioned Cases there is not only the Schismaticalness of the Assemblies but the sinful Matter of the Prayers to be considered There is a Fault in what they pay which is a corrupt and sinful Worship as well as in the Society where they pay it which is not in the Unity of the Spirit and the Bond of Peace but in Schismatical Congregations And though the Necessity of having some Ministerial Offices and the want of opportunity for any others will excuse the first faultiness viz. The Schismaticalness of the Assemblies What shall such People do to get over the second viz. the Unrighteous Petitions or sinful Matter of the Prayers which are offered up to God therein As to this to concur and go along in any immoral or unrighteous Petition or Thanksgiving is certainly an immoral and unrighteous thing as praying is most solemnly taking part with and endeavouring for them Nay to offer up these in Prayers and Religious Addresses is a most impudently and horribly prophane thing it abuses the Great and most Holy God by making him a Present of the most hateful Abominations it blasphemes and asperses him for an immoral and unrighteous God who can accept a Present of Unrighteousness who can be pleased or think himself honoured therewith or be entreated to become the patron and Maintainer thereof So that when such Prayers occur in Sacred Offices or when they have the accessional allotment and furtherance of set Days of Fasting or Thanksgiving no Man who would preserve any Reverence for God or Respect for Religion or Care of his own Soul must concur therein but instead of helping on all true Worshippers of God and Lovers of Righteousness as I conceive most utterly detest and abhor them But in mixt Prayers where some are holy and some are sinful what may be done by those who would pick and chuse and joyn with them only in the good but keep off from the evil Now as to this the sinful mixture may be of Idolatrous Worship or Prayers And not to discuss whether it may be excuseable in any Cases to resort to Churches where there are such Mixtures of idolatrous service I think however these are not on the same Level with others but that there is a greater bar to all Communion in Worship by such Mixtures For Idolatry doth more peculiarly and heinously affect worship In respect of it God declares himself a jealous God and so is less likely to accept of any worship in partnership with Creatures or in sacred Offices to admit of and go halves with Rivals And with particular respect to this St. Paul sets out the incompatibleness of communicating both with Christ and Belial and the Scripture-precepts of be ye separate and come out from among them do more directly and forceably affect this than other sins in Religious Assemblies Or the good parts of the worship which are intermixt with the evil may not afford them all that is necessary in Christian Worship or not in such a way as it is necessary they should have it And then there is a â—ar to Communion in such worship not only from the Mixture of ill Prayers from which the partakers in other parts would separate but also from the defectiveness of those good parts thereof which are to recommend it because they do not supply the Worshippers with all that is necessary in Christian worship Thus instead of whole they may administer half Sacraments sacrilegiously