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A30895 An apology for the true Christian divinity, as the same is held forth, and preached by the people, called, in scorn, Quakers being a full explanation and vindication of their principles and doctrines, by many arguments, deduced from Scripture and right reason, and the testimony of famous authors, both ancient and modern, with a full answer to the strongest objections usually made against them, presented to the King / written and published in Latine, for the information of strangers, by Robert Barclay ; and now put into our own language, for the benefit of his country-men.; Theologiae verè Christianae apologia. English Barclay, Robert, 1648-1690. 1678 (1678) Wing B721; ESTC R1740 415,337 436

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be truly one must be much more necessary to make a man a Minister of Christianity seeing the one is a degree above the other and has it included in it nothing less than he that supposeth a master supposeth him first to have attained the knowledg and capacity of a Scholar They that are not Christians cannot be Teachers or Ministers among Christians But this inward call power and vertue of the Spirit of God is necessary to make a man a Christian as we have abundantly proved before in the second proposition according to these Scriptures He that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his As many as are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God Therefore this call moving and drawing of the Spirit must be much more necessary to make a minister Secondly all ministers of the New Testament ought to be ministers of the Spirit and not of the letter according to that 2 Cor. 3.6 and as the old Latine hath it not by the letter but by the Spirit But how can a man be a minister of the Spirit who is not inwardly called by it and who looks not upon the operation and testimony of the Spirit as essential to his call As he could not be a minister of the letter who had thence no ground for his call yea that were altogether a stranger to and unacquainted with it so neither can he be a minister of the Spirit who is a stranger to it and unacquainted with the motions thereof and knows it not to draw act and move him and go before him in the work of the Ministery I would willingly know how those that take upon them to be ministers as they suppose of the Gospel meerly from an outward vocation without so much as being any ways sensible of the work of the Spirit or any inward call therefrom can either satisfie themselves or others that they are Ministers of the Spirit or wherein they differ from the ministers of the Letter For Thirdly if this inward call or testimony of the Spirit were not essential and necessary to a minister then the ministery of the New Testament should not only be no ways preferable to but in divers respects far worse than that of the Law for under the Law there was certain tribe allotted for the ministery and of that tribe certain families set apart for the priesthood and other offices by the immediate command of God to Moses so that the people needed not be in any doubt who should be Priests and Ministers of the holy things yea and besides this God called forth by the immediate testimony of his Spirit several at divers times to teach instruct and reprove his people as Samuel Nathan Elias Elisa Jeremiah Amos and many more of the Prophets But now under the New Covenant where the ministry ought to be more spiritual the way more certain and the access more easie unto the Lord our adversaries by denying the necessity of this inward and Spiritual vocation make it quite otherways for there being now no certain family or tribe to which the ministry is limited we are left in uncertainty to chuse and have pastors at a venture without all certain assent of the will of God having neither an outward rule nor certainty in this affair to walk by for that the Scripture cannot give any certain rule in this matter hath in the third Proposition concerning it been already shewn Fourthly Christ proclaims them all Thieves and Robbers that enter not by him the door into the Sheep-fold but climb up some other way whom the Sheep ought not to hear but such as come in without the Call movings and leadings of the Spirit of Christ wherewith he leads his Children into all truth come in certainly not by Christ who is the Door but some other way and therefore are not true Shepherds Obj. § VIII To all this they object the succession of the Church alledging that since Christ gave a call to his Apostles and Disciples they have conveyed that call to their Successors having power to ordain Pastors and Teachers by which power the authority of ordaining and making Ministers and Pastors is successively conveyed to us so that such who are ordained and called by the Pastors of the Church are therefore true and lawful Ministers and others who are not so called are to be accounted but intruders Hereunto also some Protestants add a necessity though they make it not as a thing essential that besides this calling of the Church every one being called ought to have the inward call of the Spirit inclining him so chosen to his work but this they say is subjective and not objective of which before Answ. As to what is subjoined of the inward call of the Spirit in that they make it not essential to a true call but a supererogation as it were it sheweth how little they set by it since those they admit to the ministery are not so much as questioned in their trials whether they have this or not Yet in that it hath been often mentioned especially by the Primitive Protestants in their treatises of this subject it sheweth how much they were secretly convinced in their minds that this inward call of the Spirit was most excellent and preferable to any other and therefore in the most noble and heroick acts of the reformation they laid claim unto it so that many of the primitive Protestants did not scruple both to despise and disown this outward call when urged by the Papists against them But now Protestants having gone from the testimony of the Spirit plead for the same succession and being pressed by those whom God now raiseth up by his Spirit to reform these many abuses that are among them with the example of their Forefathers practice against Rome they are not at all asham'd utterly to deny that their fathers were call'd to their work by the inward and immediate vocation of the Spirit cloathing themselves with that call which they say their Forefathers had as Pastors of the Roman Church For thus not to go further affirmeth Nicolaus Arnoldus in a pamphlet written against the same Propositions called a Theologick Exercitation sect 40. averring that they pretended not to an immediate act of the Holy Spirit but reformed by the vertue of the ordinary vocation which they had in the Church as it then was to wit that of Rome c. § IX Many absurdities do Protestants fall into by deriving their ministry thus through the Church of Rome As first they must acknowledg her to be a true Church of Christ though only erroneous in some things which contradicts their fore-fathers so frequently and yet truly calling her Anti-Christ Secondly they must needs acknowledge that the Priests and Bishops of the Romish Church are true Ministers and Pastors of the Church of Christ as to the essential part else they could not have been fit subjects for that power and authority to have resided in neither
could they have been vessels capable to receive that power and again transmit it to their successors Thirdly it would follow from this that the Priests and Bishops of the Romish Church are yet really true Pastors and Teachers for if Protestant Ministers have no authority but what they received from them and since the Church of Rome is the same she was at that time of the reformation in doctrine and manners and she has the same power now she had then and if the power lye in the Succession then these Priests of the Romish Church now which derive their ordination from those Bishops that ordained the first reformers have the same authority which the successors of the reformed have and consequently are no less Ministers of the Church than they are But how shall this agree with that opinion which the primitive Protestants had of the Romish Priests and Clergy to whom Luther did not only deny any power or authority but contrariwise affirmed that it was wickedly done of them to assume to themselves only this authority to teach and be Priests and Ministers c. For he himself affirmed that every good Christian not only men but even women also is a Preacher § X. But against this vain succession as asserted either by the Papists or Protestants as a necessary thing to the call of a minister I answer that such as plead for it as a sufficient or necessary thing to the call of a minister do thereby sufficiently declare their ignorance of the nature of Christianity and how much they are strangers to the Life and Power of a Christian ministery which is not entail'd to succession as an outward inheritance and herein as hath been often before observed they not only make the Gospel not better than the Law but even far short of it for Jesus Christ as he regardeth not any distinct particular family or nation in the gathering of his Children but only such as are joined to and leavened with his own pure and righteous Seed so neither regards he a bare outward succession where his pure immaculate and righteous Life is wanting for that were all one He took not in the Nations within the New Covenant that he might suffer them to fall into the old errors of the Jews or to approve them in these errors but that he might gather unto himself a pure people out of the earth Now this was the great error of the Jews to think they were the Church and People of God because they could derive their outward succession from Abraham whereby they reckoned themselves the Children of God as being the off-spring of Abraham who was the Father of the faithful But how severely doth the Scripture rebuke this vain and frivolous pretence Telling them that God is able of the stones to raise children unto Abraham and that not the outward seed but those that were found in the faith of Abraham are the true Children of faithful Abraham Far less then can this pretence hold among Christians seeing Christ rejects all outward affinity of that kind These saith he are my mother brethren and sisters who do the will of my Father which is in heaven And again He looked round about him and said who shall do the will of God these said he are my brethren So then such as do not the commands of Christ as are not found cloathed with his righteousness are not his disciples and that which a man hath not he cannot give to another and it 's clear that no man nor Church though truly called of God and as such having the authority of a Church and Minister can any longer retain that authority than they retain the power life and righteousness of Christianity for the form is entailed to the power and substance and not the substance to the form So that when a man ceaseth inwardly in his heart to be a Christian where his Christianity must lie by turning to Satan and becoming a reprobate he is no more a Christian though he retain the name and form than a dead man is a man though he have the image and representation of one or than the Picture or Statue of a man is a man and though a dead man may serve to a Painter to retain some imperfect representation of the man that sometimes was alive and so one Picture may serve to make another by yet none of those can serve to make a true living man again neither can they conveigh the life and spirit of the man it must be God that made the man at first that alone can revive him As death then makes such interruption of an outward natural succession that no art nor outward form can uphold and as a dead man after he is dead can have no issue neither can dead images of men make living men so that it is the living that are only capable to succeed one another and such as dye so soon as they dye cease to succeed or to transmit Succession So it is in Spiritual things it is the life of Christianity taking place in the Heart that makes a Christian and so it is a number of such being alive joyned together in the life of Christianity that make a Church of Christ and it is all those that are thus alive and quickened considered together that make the Catholick Church of Christ Therefore where this life ceaseth in one then that one ceaseth to be a Christian and all power vertue and authority which he had as a Christian ceaseth with it so that if he hath been a Minister or Teacher he ceaseth to be so any more and though he retain the form and hold to the authority in words yet that signifies no more nor is it of any more real vertue or authority than the meer image of a dead man And as this is most agreeable to Reason so is it to the Scriptures Testimony for it is said of Judas Acts 1.25 That Judas fell from his Ministry and Apostleship by transgression So his transgression caused him to cease to be an Apostle any more whereas had the Apostleship been entailed to his person so that transgression could not cause him to lose it until he had been formally degraded by the Church which Judas never was so long as he lived Judas had been as really an Apostle after he betrayed Christ as before And as it is of one so of many yea of a whole Church for seeing nothing makes a man truly a Christian but the life of Christianity inwardly ruling in his Heart so nothing makes a Church but the gathering of several true Christians into one Body Now where all these members lose in this life there the Church ceaseth to be though they still uphold the form and retain the name for when that which made them a Church and for which they were a Church ceaseth then they cease also to be a Church and therefore the Spirit speaking to the Church of Laodicea because of her luke-warmness Rev. 3.16 threateneth to
spue her out of his mouth Now suppose the Church of Laodicea had continued in that luke-warmness and had come under that condemnation and iudgment though she had retained the name and form of a Church and had had her Pastors and Ministers as no doubt she had at that time yet surely she had been no true Church of Christ nor had the authority of her Pastors and Teachers been to be regarded because of any outward succession though perhaps some of them had it immediately from the Apostles From all which I infer That since the authority of the Christian Church and her Pastors is always united and never separated from the inward power vertue and righteous life of Christianity where this ceaseth that ceaseth also But our adversaries acknowledge That many if not most of those by and through whom they derive this authority were altogether destitute of this life and vertue of Christianity Therefore they could neither receive have nor transmit any Christian authority Obj. But if it be objected That though the generality of the Bishops and Priests of the Church of Rome during the apostasie were such wicked men yet Protestants affirm and thou thy self seemest to acknowledge that there were some good men among them whom the Lord regarded and who were true members of the Catholick Church of Christ might not they then have transmitted this authority Answ. I answer This saith nothing in respect Protestants do not at all lay claim to their Ministry as transmitted to them by a direct line of such good men which they can never shew nor yet pretend to but generally place this succession as inherent in the whole Pastors of the Apostate Church neither do they plead their call to be good and valid because they can derive it through a line of good men separate and observable distinguishable from the rest of the Bishops and Clergy of the Romish Church but they derive it as an Authority residing in the whole for they think it heresie to judge that the quality or condition of the Administrator any ways invalidates or prejudiceth his work This vain then and pretended Succession not only militates against and fights with the very manifest purpose and intent of Christ in the gathering and calling of his Church but makes him so to speak more blind and less prudent than natural men are in conveying and establishing their outward Inheritances for where an Estate is entailed to a certain Name and Family when that Family weareth out and there is no lawful Successor found of it that can make a just title appear as being really of blood and affinity to the Family it is not lawful for any one of another race or blood because he assumes the name or arms of that Family to possess the estate and claim the superiorities and priviledges of the family but by the law of Nations the inheritance devolves into the Prince as being ultimus haeres and so he giveth it again immediately to whom he seeth meet and makes them bear the name and arms of the family who then are entitled to the priviledges and revenues thereof So in like manner the true name and title of a Christian by which he hath right to the heavenly inheritance and is a member of Jesus Christ is inward Righteousness and Holiness and the mind redeemed from the vanities lusts and iniquities of this world And a gathering or company made up of such members makes a Church where this is lost the title is lost and so the true Seed to which the promise is and to which the inheritance is due becomes extinguished in them and they become dead as to it and so it retires and devolves it self again into Christ who is the righteous heir of Life and he gives the title and true right again immediately to whom it pleaseth him even to as many as being turned to his Pure Light in their Consciences come again to walk in his righteous and innocent life and so become true members of his body which is the Church So the authority power and heirship is not annexed to persons as they bear the bare names or retain a form holding the meer shell or shadow of Christianity But the promise is to Christ and to the Seed in whom the authority is inherent and in as many as are one with him and united unto him by purity and holiness and by the inward renovation and regeneration of their minds Moreover this pretended succession is contrary to Scripture definitions and nature of the Church of Christ and of the true members For first The Church is the house of God the pillar and ground of Truth 1 Tim. 3.15 But according to this Doctrine the house of God is a polluted nest of all sort of wickedness and abominations made up of the most ugly defiled and perverse stones that are in the earth where the devil rules in all manner of unrighteousness For so our adversaries confess and History informs the Church of Rome to have been as some of their Historians acknowledge and if that be truly the house of God what may we call the house of Satan or may we call it therefore the house of God notwithstanding all this impiety because they had a bare form and that vitiated many ways also and because they pretended to the name of Christianity though they were anti-christian devilish and atheistical in their whole practice and spirit and also in many of their principles Would not this infer yet a greater absurdity as if they had been something to be accounted of because of their hypocrisie and deceit and false pretences Whereas the Scripture looks upon that as an aggravation of guilt and calls it Blasphemy Rev. 2.9 Of two wicked men he is most to be abhorred who covereth his wickedness with a vain pretence of God and righteousness even so these abominable beasts and fearful monsters who look upon themselves to be Bishops in the apostate Church were never a whit the better that they falsly pretended to be the Successors of the Holy Apostles unless to lie be commendable and that hypocrisie be the way to Heaven Yea were not this to fall into that evil condemned among the Jews Jer. 7.4 Trust ye not in lying words saying The Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord are these throughly amend your ways c. as if such outward names and things were the thing the Lord regarded and not inward holiness or can that then be the pillar and ground of Truth which is the very sink and pit of wickedness from which so much error superstition idolatry and all abomination springs Can there be any thing more contrary both to Scripture and Reason Secondly The Church is defined to be the Kingdom of the dear Son of God into which the Saints are translated being delivered from the power of darkness It is called the Body of Christ which from him by joynts and bands having nourishment ministred and knit
together increaseth with the increase of God Col. 2.19 But can such members such a gathering as we have demonstrated that Church and Members to be among whom they alledge their pretended authority to have been preserved and through which they derive their call can such I say be the body of Christ or members thereof or is Christ the head of such a corrupt dead dark abominable stinking carcase If so then might we not as well affirm against the Apostle 2 Cor. 6.14 That righteousness hath fellowship with unrighteousness that Light hath communion with Darkness that Christ hath concord with Belial that a Believer hath part with an Infidel and that the Temple of God hath agreement with Idols Moreover no man is called the Temple of God nor of the Holy Ghost but as his vessel is purified and so he fitted and prepared for God to dwell in and many thus fitted by Christ become his body in and among whom he dwells and walks according as it is written I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be my people It is therefore that we may become the Temple of Christ and people of God that the Apostle in the following verse exhorts saying out of the Prophet Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you and I will be a Father unto you and ye shall be my Sons and Daughters saith the Lord Almighty But to what purpose all this exhortation and why should we separate from the unclean if a meer outward profession and name be enough to make the true Church and if the unclean and polluted were both the Church and lawful successors of the Apostles inheriting their authority and transmitting it to others Yea how can the Church be the Kingdom of the Son of God as contrary distinguished from the Kingdom and Power of darkness and what need yea what possibility of being translated out of the one into the other if those that make up the Kingdom and Power of darkness be real members of the true Church of Christ and not simple members only but the very Pastors and Teachers of it But how do they increase in the increase of God and receive Spiritual nourishment from Christ the Head that are enemies of him in their hearts by wicked works and openly go into perdition Verily as no metaphysical and nice distinctions that though they were practically as to their own private states enemies to God and Christ and so servants of Satan yet they were by vertue of their office members and ministers of the Church and so able to transmit the succession I say as such invented and frivolous distinctions will not please the Lord God neither will he be deluded by such nor make up the glorious body of his Church with such meer out-side hypocritical shews nor be beholden to such painted sepulchres for to be members of his body which is sound pure and undefiled and therefore he needs not such false and corrupt members to make up the defects of it so neither will such distinctions satisfie truly tender and Christian Consciences especially considering the Apostle is so far from desiring us to regard that as that we are expresly commanded to turn away from such as have a form of godliness but deny the power of it For we may well object against these as the poor man did against the proud Prelate that went about to cover his vain and unchristian-like sumptuousness by distinguishing that it was not as Bishop but as Prince he had all that splendor To which the poor rustick wisely is said to have answered When the Prince goeth to Hell what shall become of the Prelate And indeed this were to suppose the body of Christ to be defective and that to fill up these defective places he puts counterfeit and dead stuff instead of real living members like such as lose their eyes arms or legs make counterfeit ones of timber or glass instead of them But we cannot think so of Christ neither can we believe for the reasons above adduced that either we are to account or that Christ doth account any man or men a whit the more members of his body because though they be really wicked they hypocritically and deceitfully cloath themselves with his Name pretended to it for this is contrary to his own doctrine where he saith expresly Joh. 15.1 2 3 4 5 6 c. that he is the Vine and his Disciples are the Branches that except they abide in him they cannot bear fruit and if they be unfruitful they shall be cast forth as a branch and wither Now I suppose these cut and withered branches are no more true branches nor members of the Vine they can draw no more sap nor nourishment from it after that they are cut off and so have no more vertue sap nor life What have they then to boast or glory of any authority seeing they want that life vertue and nourishment from which all authority comes So such members of Christ as are become dead to him through unrighteousness and so derive no more vertue nor life from him are cut off by their sins and wither and have no more any true or real authority and their boasting of any is but an aggravation of their iniquity by hypocrisie and deceit But further would not this make Christ's body a meer shadow and phantam Yea would it not make him the head of a lifeless rotten stinking carcase having only some little outward false shew while inwardly full of rottenness and dirt and what a monster would these men make of Christ's body by assigning it real pure living quick Head full of vertue and life and yet tied to such a dead lifeless body as we have already described these members to be which they alledge to have been the Church of Christ. Again the members of the Church of Christ are specified by this definition to wit as being the sanctified in Christ Jesus 1. Cor. 1.2 But this notion of succession supposeth not only some unsanctified members to be of the Church of Christ but even the whole to consist of unsanctified members yea that such as were professed Necromancers and open servants of Satan were the true successors of the Apostles and in whom the Apostolick authority resided these being the vessels through whom this Succession is transmitted though many of them as all Protestants and also some Papists confess attained these offices in the so called Church not only by such means as Simon Magus sought it but by much worse even by witchcraft murther traditions money and treachery which Platina himself confesseth of divers Bishops of Rome § XI But such as object not this succession of the Church which yet most Protestants begin now to do distinguish in this matter affirming that in a great apostacy such as was that of the Church of Rome God may raise up some
us in the time of our ignorance providing always they did not seek to obtrude them upon others nor judg such as found themselves delivered or that they do not pertinaciously adhere to them For we certainly know that the day is dawned in which God hath arisen and hath dismissed all those ceremonies and rites and is only to be worshipped in Spirit and that he appears to them who wait upon him and that to seek God in these things is with Mary at the Sepulchre to seek the living among the dead for we know that he is arisen and revealed in Spirit leading his Children out of these rudiments that they may walk with him in his Light to whom be Glory for ever Amen The Fourteenth Proposition Concerning the Power of the Civil Magistrate in matters purely Religious and pertaining to the Conscience Since God hath assumed to himself the Power and Dominion of the Conscience who alone can rightly instruct and govern it therefore it is not lawful for any whosoever by vertue of any Authority or Principality they bear in the Government of this World to force the Consciences of others and therefore all killing banishing fining imprisoning and other such things which are inflicted upon men for the alone exercise of their Conscience or difference in Worship or Opinion proceedeth from the Spirit of Cain the Murtherer and is contrary to the Truth providing always that no man under the pretence of Conscience prejudice his Neighbour in this life or estate or do any thing destructive to or inconsistent with humane Society in which case the Law is for the transgressor and Justice is to be administred upon all without respect of persons § I. LIBERTY of Conscience from the power of the Civil Magistrate hath been of late years so largely and learnedly handled that I shall not need but to be brief in it yet it is to be lamented that few have walked answerably to this principle each pleading it for themselves but scarce allowing it to others as hereafter I shall have occasion more at length to observe It will be fit in the first place for clearing of mistakes to say something of the state of the controversie that what follows may be the more clearly understood By Conscience then as in the explanation of the 5 and 6 Propositions I have observed is to be understood that perswasion of the mind which arises from the understandings being possessed with the belief of the Truth or Falsity of any thing which though it may be false or evil upon the matter yet if a man should go against his perswasion or Conscience he should commit a sin because what a man doth contrary to his Faith though his Faith be wrong is no ways acceptable to God hence the Apostle saith whatsoever is not of Faith is sin and he that doubteth is damned if he eat though the thing might have been lawful to another and that this doubting to eat some kind of meats since all the creatures of God are good and for the use of man if received with thanksgiving might be a superstition or at lest a weakness which were better removed Hence Ames De Cas. Cons. saith The Conscience although erring doth evermore bind so as that he sinneth who doth contrary to his Conscience because he doth contrary to the will of God although not materially and truly yet formally and interpretatively So the question is First Whether the Civil Magistrate hath power to force men in things religious to do contrary to their Conscience and if they will not to punish them in their goods liberties or lives this we hold in the negative But secondly as we would have the Magistrate avoiding this extream of incroaching upon men's Consciences so on the other hand we are far from joyning with or strengthening such libertines as would stretch the liberty of their Consciences to the prejudice of their Neighbours or to the ruin of humane Society We understand therefore by matters of Conscience such as immediately relate betwixt God and man or men and men that are under the same perswasion as to meet together and worship God in that way which they judg is most acceptable unto him and not to incroach upon or seek to force their neighbours otherwise than by reason or such other means as Christ and his Apostles used viz. preaching and instructing such as will hear and receive it but not at all for men under the notion of Conscience to do any thing contrary to the moral and perpetual statutes generally acknowledged by all Christians in which case the Magistrate may very lawfully use his Authority as on those who under a pretence of Conscience make it a principle to kill and destroy all the wicked id est all that differ from them that they to wit the Saints may rule and that therefore seek to make all things common and would force their neighbours to share their Estates with them and many such wild notions as is reported of the Anabaptists of Munster which evidently appears to proceed from pride and covetousness and not from purity or Conscience and therefore I have sufficiently guarded against that in the latter part of the Proposition But the Liberty we lay claim to is such as the primitive Church justly sought under the Heathen Emperors to wit for men of sobriety honesty and a peaceable conversation to enjoy the liberty and exercise of their Conscience towards God and among themselves and to admit among them such as by their perswasion and influence come to be convinced of the same Truth with them without being therefore molested by the Civil Magistrate Thirdly though we would not have men hurt in their Temporals nor robbed of their Priviledges as men and members of the Common-wealth because of their inward perswasion yet we are far from judging that in the Church of God there should not be censures exercised against such as fall into error as well as such as commit open evils and therefore we believe it may be very lawful for a Christian Church if she find any of her Members fall into any error after due admonitions and instructions according to Gospel order if she find them pertinacious to cut them off from her fellowship by the Sword of the Spirit and denude them of these priviledges which they had as fellow-members but not to cut them off from the world by the temporal Sword or rob them of their common priviledges as men seeing they enjoy not these as Christians or under such a fellowship but as men and members of the Creation Hence Chrysostom saith well de Anath We must condemn and reprove the evil Doctrins that proceed from Hereticks but spare the men and pray for their Salvation § II. But that no man by vertue of any Power or Principality he hath in the Government of this World hath power over the Consciences of men is apparent because the Conscience of man is the Seat and Throne of God in him of