Chap. 17. de Cive In the Body of the Chapter it is thus The time of Christ's being upon the Earth is called in Scripture the Regeneration often but the Kingdom never When the Son of God comes in Majesty and all the Angels with him then he shall sit on the seat of Majesty My Kingdom is not of this World God sent not his Son that he should judge the World I came not to judge the World but to save the World Man who made me a Judge or Divider amongst you Let thy Kingdom come And other words to the same purpose out of which it is clear that Christ took upon him no Regal Power upon Earth before his Assumption But at his Assumption his Apostles asked him if he would then restore the Kingdom to Israel and he answered it was not for them to know So that hitherto Christ had not taken that Office upon him unless his Lordship think that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Christ be two distinct Kingdoms From the Assumption ever since all true Christians say daily in their Prayers Thy Kingdom come But his Lordship had perhaps forgot that But when then beginneth Christ to be a King I say it shall be then when he comes again in Majesty with all the Angels And even then he shall reign as he is Man under his Father For St. Paul saith 1 Cor. 15.25 26. He must reign till he hath put all Enemies under his feet the last Enemy that shall be destroyed is Death But when shall God the Father reign again St. Paul saith in the same Chapter verse 28. When all things shall be subdued unto him then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him that God may be all in all And verse 24. Then cometh the end when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God even the Father when he shall have put down all Rule Authority and Power This is at the Resurrection And by this it is manifest that his Lordship was not so well versed in Scripture as he ought to have been J. D. He taketh away his Priestly or Propitiatory Office And although this Act of our Redemption be not alwayes in Scripture called a Sacrifice and Oblation but sometimes a Price yet by Price we are not to understand any thing by the value whereof he could claim right to a Pardon for us from his Offended Father but that Price which God the Father was pleased in mercy to demand And again Not that the Death of one Man though without sin can satisfie for the Offences of all Men in the rigour of Justice but in the mercy of God that ordained such Sacrifices for sin as he was pleased in mercy to accept He knoweth no difference between one who is meer man and one who was both God and man between a Levitical Sacrifice and the All-sufficient Sacrifice of the Cross between the Blood of a Calf and the precious Blood of the Son of God T. H. Yes I know there is a difference between Blood and Blood but not any such as can make a difference in the Case here questioned Our Saviour's Blood was most precious but still it was Humane Blood and I hope his Lordship did never think otherwise or that it was not accepted by his Father for our Redemption J. D. And touching the Prophetical Office of Christ I do much doubt whether he do believe in earnest that there is any such thing as Prophecy in the World He maketh very little difference between a Prophet and a Mad-man and a Demoniack And if there were nothing else says he that bewrayed their madness yet that very arrogating such inspiration to themselves is Argument enough He maketh the pretence of Inspiration in any man to be and always to have been on opinion pernicious to Peace and tending to the dissolution of all Civil Government He subjecteth all Prophetical Revelations from God to the sole Pleasure and Censure of the Soveraign Prince either to Authorize them or to Exauctorate them So as two Prophets prophecying the same thing at the same time in the Dominions of two different Princes the one shall be a true Prophet the other a false And Christ who had the approbation of no Soveraign Prince upon his grounds was to be reputed a false Prophet every where Every man therefore ought to consider who is the Soveraign Prophet that is to say who it is that is Gods Vicegerent upon Earth and hath next under God the Authority of governing Christian Men and to observe for a Rule that Doctrine which in the Name of God he hath Commanded to be taught and thereby to examine and try out the truth of those Doctrines which pretended Prophets with miracle or without shall at any time advance c. And if he disavow them then no more to obey their Voice or if he approve them then to obey them as Men to whom God hath given a part of the Spirit of their Soveraign Upon his Principles the case holdeth as well among Jews and Turks and Heathens as Christians Then he that teacheth Transubstantiation in France is a true Prophet he that teacheth in it England a false Prophet He that blasphemeth Christ in Constantinople a true Prophet he that doth the same in Italy a false Prophet Then Samuel was a false Prophet to contest with Saul a Soveraign Prophet So was the Man of God who submitted not to the more Divine and Prophetick Spirit of Jeroboam And Elijah for reproving Ahab Then Michaiah had but his deserts to be clapt up in Prison and fed with Bread of Affliction and Water of Affliction for daring to contradict God's Vice-gerent upon Earth And Jeremiah was justly thrown into a Dungeon for Prophecying against Zedekiah his Liege Lord. If his Principles were true it were strange indeed that none of all these Princes nor any other that ever was in the World should understand their own Priviledges And yet more strange that God Almighty should take the part of such Rebellious Prophets and justifie their Prophesies by the Event if is were true that none but the Soveraign in a Christian the reason is the same for Jewish Commonwealth can take notice what is or what is not the Word of God T. H. To remove his Lordship's doubt in the first place I confess there was true Prophesie and true Prophets in the Church of God from Abraham down to our Saviour the greatest Prophet of all and the last of the Old Testament and first of the New After our Saviour's time till the death of St. John the Apostle there were true Prophets in the Church of Christ Prophets to whom God spake supernaturally and testified the truth of their Mission by Miracles Of those that in the Scripture are called Prophets without Miracles and for this cause only that they spake in the Name of God to Men and in the name of Men to God there are have been and shall be in the Church
Contradictories to be true together T. H. There is no doubt but by what Authority the Scripture or any other Writing is made a Law by the same Authority the Scriptures are to be interpreted or else they are made Law in vain But to obey is one thing to believe is another which distinction perhaps his Lordship never heard of To obey is to do or forbear as one is commanded and depends on the Will but to believe depends not on the Will but on the providence and guidance of our hearts that are in the hands of God Almighty Laws only require obedience Belief requires Teachers and Arguments drawn either from Reason or from some thing already believed Where there is no reason for our Belief there is no reason we should believe The reason why men believe is drawn from the Authority of those men whom we have no just cause to mistrust that is of such men to whom no profit accrues by their deceiving us and of such men as never used to lye or else from the Authority of such men whose Promises Threats and Affirmations we have seen confirmed by God with Miracles If it be not from the Kings Authority that the Scripture is Law what other Authority makes it Law Here some man being of his Lordships judgment will perhaps laugh and say 't is the Authority of God that makes them Law I grant that But my question is on what Authority they believe that God is the Author of them Here his Lordship would have been at a Nonplus and turning round would have said the Authority of the Scripture makes good that God is their Author If it be said we are to believe the Scripture upon the Authority of the Universal Church why are not the Books we call Apocrypha the Word of God as well as the rest If this Authority be in the Church of England then it is not any other than the Authority of the Head of the Church which is the King For without the Head the Church is mute the Authority therefore is in the King which is all that I contended for in this point As to the Laws of the Gentiles concerning Religion in the Primitive times of the Church I confess they were contrary to Christian Faith But none of their Laws nor Terrors nor a mans own Will are able to take away Faith though they can compel to an external obedience and though I may blame the Ethnick Princes for compelling men to speak what they thought not yet I absolve not all those that have had the Power in Christian Churches from the same fault For I believe since the time of the first four General Councels there have been more Christians burnt and killed in the Christian Church by Ecclesiastical Authority than by the Heathen Emperors Laws for Religion only without Sedition All that the Bishop does in this Argument is but a heaving at the Kings Supremacy Oh but says he if two Kings interpret a place of Scripture in contrary sences it will follow that both sences are true It does not follow For the interpretation though it be made by just Authority must not therefore always be true If the Doctrine in the one sence be necessary to Salvation then they that hold the other must dye in their sins and be Damned But if the Doctrine in neither sence be necessary to Salvation then all is well except perhaps that they will call one another Atheists and fight about it J. D. All the power vertue use and efficacy which he ascribeth to the Holy Sacraments is to be signs or commemorations As for any sealing or confirming or conferring of Grace he acknowledgeth nothing The same he saith particularly of Baptism Upon which grounds a Cardinals red Hat or a Serjeant at Arms his Mace may be called Sacraments as well as Baptism or the holy Eucharist if they be only signs and commemorations of a benefit If he except that Baptism and the Eucharist are of Divine institution But a Cardinals red Hat or a Serjeant at Arms his Mace are not He saith truly but nothing to his advantage or purpose seeing he deriveth all the Authority of the Word and Sacraments in respect of Subjects and all our obligation to them from the Authority of the Soveraign Magistrate without which these words repent and be Baptized in the name of Jesus are but Counsel no Command And so a Serjeant at Arms his Mace and Baptism proceed both from the same Authority And this he saith upon this filly ground That nothing is a Command the performance whereof tendeth to our own benefit He might as well deny the Ten Commandments to be Commands because they have an advantagious promise annexed to them Do this and thou shalt live And Cursed is every one that continueth not in all the words of this Law to do them T. H. Of the Sacraments I said no more than that they are Signs or Commemorations He finds fault that I add not Seals Confirmations and that they confer grace First I would have asked him if a Seal be any thing else besides a Sign whereby to remember somewhat as that we have promised accepted acknowledged given undertaken somewhat Are not other Signs though without a Seal of force sufficient to convince me or oblige me A Writing obligatory or Release signed only with a mans name is as Obligatory as a Bond signed and sealed if it be sufficiently proved though peradventure it may require a longer Process to obtain a Sentence but his Lordship I think knew better than I do the force of Bonds and Bills yet I know this that in the Court of Heaven there is no such difference between saying signing and sealing as his Lordship seemeth here to pretend I am Baptized for a Commemoration that I have enrolled my self I take the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to Commemorate that Christ's Body was broken and his Blood shed for my redemption What is there more intimated concerning the nature of these Sacraments either in the Scripture or in the Book of Common-Prayer Have Bread and Wine and Water in their own Nature any other Quality than they had before the Consecration It is true that the Consecration gives these bodies a new Relation as being a giving and dedicating of them to God that is to say a making of them Holy not a changing of their Quality But as some silly young men returning from France affect a broken English to be thought perfect in the French language so his Lordship I think to seem a perfect understander of the unintelligible language of the Schoolmen pretends an ignorance of his Mother Tongue He talks here of Command and Counsel as if he were no English man nor knew any difference between their significations What English man when he commandeth says more than Do this yet he looks to be obeyed if obedience be due unto him But when he says Do this and thou shalt have such or such a Reward he encourages him or advises him or
present time I am forced to in my defence not against the Church but against the accusations and arguments oâ— my Adversaries For the Church though it excommunicates for scandalous life and for teaching false Doctrines yet it professeth to impose nothing to be held as Faith but what may be warranted by Scripture and this the Church it self saith in thâ— 20th of the 39 Articles of Religion Anâ— therefore I am permitted to alledge Scrâ—pture at any time in the defence of my Belief J. D. But they that in one case are grieved in another must be relieved If perchance T. H. hath given his Disciples any discontent in his Doctrine of Heaven and the holy Angels and the glorified Souls of the Saints he will make them amends in his Doctrine of Hell and the Devils and the damned Spirits First of the Devils He fancieth that all those Devils which our Saviour did cast out were Phrensies and all Demoniacks or Persons possessed no other than Mad-men And to justifie our Saviour's speaking to a Disease as to a Person produceth the example of inchanters But he declareth himself most clearly upon this Subject in his Animadversions upon my reply to his defence of fatal destiny There are in the Scripture two sorts of things which are in English translated Devils One is that which is called Satan Diabolus Abaddon which signifieth in English an Enemy an Accuser and a destroyer of the Church of God in which sence the Devils are but wicked men The other sort of Devils are called in the Scripture Daemonia which are the feigned Gods of the Heathen and are neither Bodies nor spiritual Substances but meer fancies and fictions of terrified hearts feigned by the Greeks and other Heathen People which St. Paul calleth Nothings So T.H. hath killed the great infernal Devil and all his black Angels and left no Devils to be feared but Devils Incarnate that is wicked men T. H. As for the first words cited Levi. page 38 39. I refer the Reader to the place it self and for the words concerning Satan I leave them to the judgment of the Learned J. D. And for Hell he describeth the Kingdom of Satan or the Kingdom of darkness to be a confederacy of deceivers He telleth us that the places which set forth the torments of Hell in holy Scripture do design Metaphorically a grief and discontent of mind from the sight of that eternal felicity in others which they themselves through their own incredulity and disobedience have lost As if Metaphorical descriptions did not bear sad truths in them as well as literal as if final desperation were no more than a little fit of grief or discontent and a guilty conscience were no more than a transitory passion as if it were a loss so easily to be born to be deprived for evermore of the beatifical Vision and lastly as if the Damned besides that unspeakable loss did not likewise suffer actual Torments proportionable in some measure to their own sins and Gods Justice T. H. That Metaphors bear sad truths in them I deny not It is a sad thing to lose this present life untimely Is it not therefore much more a sad thing to lose an eternal happy Life And I believe that he which will venture upon sin with such danger will not stick to do the same notwithstanding the Doctrine of eternal torture Is it not also a sad truth that the Kingdom of darkness should be a Confederacy of deceivers J. D. Lastly for the damned Spirits he declareth himself every where that their sufferings are not eternal The Fire shall be unquenchable and the Torments everlasting but it cannot be thence inferred that he who shall be cast into that Fire or be tormented with those Torments shall endure and resist them so as to be eternally burnt and tortured and yet never be destroyed nor dye And though there be many places that affirm everlasting fire into which men may be cast successivily one after another for ever yet I find none that affirm that there shall be an everlasting life therein of any individual Person If he had said and said only that the pains of the Damned may be lessened as to the degree of them or that they endure not for ever but that after they are purged by long torments from their dross and Corruptions as Gold in the fire both the damned Spirits and the Devils themselves should be restored to a better condition he might have found some Ancients who are therefore called the merciful Doctors to have joyned with him though still he should have wanted the suffrage of the Catholick Church T. H. Why does not his Lordship cite some place of Scripture here to prove that all the Reprobates which are dead live eternally in torment We read indeed That everlasting Torments were prepared for the Devil and his Angels whose natures also are everlasting and that the Beast and the false Prophet shall be tormented everlastingly but not that every Reprobate shall be so They shall indeed be cast into the same fire but the Scripture says plainly enough that they shall be both Body and Soul destroyed there If I had said that the Devils themselves should be restored to a better condition his Lordship would have been so kind as to have put me into the number of the Merciful Doctors Truly if I had had any Warrant for the possibility of their being less enemies to the Church of God than they have been I would have been as merciful to them as any Doctor of them all As it is I am more merciful than the Bishop J. D. But his shooting is not at rovers but altogether at randome without either President or Partner All that eternal sire all those torments which he acknowledgeth is but this That after the Resurrection the Reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his Posterity were in after the sin committed saving that God promised a Redeemer to Adam and not to them Adding that they shall live as they did formerly Marry and give in Marriage and consequently engender Children perpetually after the Resurrection as they did before which he calleth an immortallity of the kind but not of the persons of men It is to be presumed that in those their second lives knowing certainly from T. H. that there is no hope of Redemption for them from corporal death upon their well-doing nor fear of any Torments after death for their ill-doing they will pass their times here as pleasantly as they can This is all the Damnation which T. H. fancieth T. H. This he has urged once before and I answered to it That the whole Paragraph was to prove that for any Text of Scripture to the contrary men might after the Resurrection live as Adam did on earth and that notwithstanding the Text of St. Luke chap. 20. verse 34 35 36. Marry and propagate But that they shall do so is no assertion of mine His Lordship knew I held that after the Resurrection there
The lawful Assembly of Pastors or of Bishops But there can be no lawful Assembly in England without the Authority of the King The Scripture therefore what it is and how to be interpreted is made known unto us here by no other way than the Authority of our Soveraign Lord both in Temporals and Spirituals The Kings Majesty And where he has set forth no Interpretation there I am allowed to follow my own as well as any other man Bishop or not Bishop For my own part all that know me know also it is my opinion That the best government in Religion is by Episcopacy but in the King 's Right not in their own But my Lord of Derry not contented with this would have the utmost resolution of our Faith to be into the Doctrine of the Schools I do not think that all the Bishops be of his mind If they were I would wish them to stand in fear of that dreadful Sentence All covet all lose I must not let pass these words of his Lordship If divine Law and humane Law clash one with another without doubt it is better evermore to obey God than man Where the King is a Christian believes the Scripture and hath the Legislative power both in Church and State and maketh no Laws concerning Christian Faith or divine Worship but by the Counsel of his Bishops whom he trusteth in that behalf if the Bishops counsel him aright what clashing can there be between the divine and humane Laws For if the Civil Law be against God's Law and the Bishops make it clearly appear to the King that it clasheth with divine Law no doubt he will mend it by himself or by the advice of his Parliament for else he is no professor of Christ's Doctrine and so the clashing is at an end But if they think that every opinion they hold though obscure and unnecessary to Salvation ought presently to be Law then there will be clashings innumerable not only of Laws but also of Swords as we have found it too true by late experience But his Lordship is still at this that there ought to be for the divine Laws that is to say for the interpretation of Scripture a Legislative power in the Church distinct from that of the King which under him they enjoy already This I deny Then for clashing between the Civil Laws of Indels with the Law of God the Apostles teach that those their Civil Laws are to be obeyed but so as to keep their Faith in Christ entirely in their hearts which is an obedience easily performed But I do not believe that Augustus Caesar or Nero was bound to make the holy Scripture Law and yet unless they did so they could not attain to eternal life J. D. His fifth conclusion may be that the sharpest and most succesful Sword in any War whatsoever doth give Soveraign Power and Authority to him that hath it to approve or reject all sorts of Theological Doctrines concerning the Kingdom of God not according to their truth or falshood but according to that influence which they have upon political affairs Hear him But because this Doctrine will appear to most men a novelty I do but propound it maintaining nothing in this or any other Paradox of Religion but attending the end of that dispute of the Sword concerning the Authority not yet amongst my Country-men decided by which all sorts of Doctrine are to be approved or rejected c. For the points of Doctrine concerning the Kingdom of God have so great influence upon the Kingdom of Man as not to be determined but by them that under God have the Soveraign Power Careat successibus opto Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat Let him evermore want success who thinketh actions are to be judged by their events This Doctrine may be plausible to those who desire to fish in troubled Waters But it is justly hated by those which are in Authority and all those who are lovers of peace and tranquillity The last part of this conclusion smelleth rankly of Jeroboam Now shall the Kingdom return to the house of David if this people go up to do Sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem whereupon the King took counsel and made two Calves of Gold and said unto them It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem behold thy Gods O Israel which brought thee out of the Land of Aegypt But by the just disposition of Almighty God this Policy turned to a sin and was the utter destruction of Jeroboam and his Family It is not good jesting with edge-tools nor playing with holy things Where men make their greatest fastness many times they find most danger T. H. His Lordship either had a strange Conscience or understood not English Being at Paris when there was no Bishop nor Church in England and every man writ what he pleased I resolved when it should please God to restore the Authority Ecclesiastical to submit to that Authority in whatsoever it should determine This his Lordship construes for a temporizing and too much indifferency in Religion and says further that the last part of my words do smell of Jeroboam To the contrary I say my words were modest and such as in duty I ought to use And I profess still that whatsoever the Church of England the Church I say not every Doctor shall forbid me to say in matter of Faith I shall abstain from saying it excepting this point That Jesus Christ the Son of God dyed for my sins As for other Doctrins I think it unlawful if the Church define them for any Member of the Church to contradict them J. D. His sixth Paradox is a rapper the Civil Laws are the Rules of good and evil just and unjust honest and dishonest and therefore what the Lawgiver commands that is to be accounted good what he forbids bad And a little after before Empires were just and unjust were not as whose nature is Relative to a Command every action in its own nature is indifferent That it is just or unjust proceedeth from the right of him that commandeth Therefore lawful Kings make those things which they command Just by commanding them and those things which they forbid Vnjust by forbidding them To this add his definition of a sin that which one doth or omitteth saith or willeth contrary to the reason of the Common-wealth that is the Civil Laws Where by the Laws he doth not understand the Written Laws elected and approved by the whole Common-wealth but the verbal Commands or Mandates of him that hath the Soveraign Power as we find in many places of his Writings The Civil Laws are nothing else but the Commands of him that is endowed with Soveraign Power in the Common-wealth concerning the future actions of his Subjects And the Civil Laws are fastned to the Lips of that man who hath the Soveraign Power Where are we In Europe or in Asia Where they ascribed a Divinity to their Kings and to