possible a number of cleere and strong probations for to convince the mind of all attentive Readers Againe you tell us that the Principle may be granted Why do you mutter betwixt your teeth speak out cleerly and plainly for if you grant it your cause is lost if you deny it your next will be to answer the numerous arguments wherewith it is compassed not any one whereof you are bold to try In the third place that you may leave a posterne for escaping the Authors cleere and plaine principle That no office is lawful in Gods house which Christ has not appointed you transforme in an other mold to wit That none may administer the Word or Sacraments impose hands or use the keyes but such as Christ has appointed When thus you have taken leave to corrupt not the words only but the matter of your adversaries very principle Episcopall Courts acknowledged to be unlawfull Notwithstanding you see the Conclusion that flows from your owne proposition to wit that your high Commissioners your Chancellours and all the Rabble of your Officiall Courtiours doe meddle with Church censures contrary to Christs appointment This you do not deny but beare us in hand that these corruptions may be amended without noise or scandall It were good that your friends in the Convocation would preveen the honourable House of Commons that at last they would offer of free accord to passe from these long defended oppressing Courts before with greater noise and shame they be compelled to render to the Presbyterie these Rites whereof too long it has been dispossed by your Bishops fraud and force When you have broken in unseasonably upon the Hypothese of Episcopacie how marvellously doe you shift and extenuate the question The authors principle did speak expresly and soly of a distinct office in the Church of God you dare not say whether Episcopacie be any such thing or not All the distinction betwixt a Bishop and a Presbyter that you speak of is a higher and lower degree as it were of the same office Your Brethren will give you small thanks for this extenuation for you know they maintaine Episcopacie to be a true and distinct office from the Priesthood unto the which beside a Superioritie of degree the distinct faculty or power of Ordination and Jurisdiction essentially doth belong wherewith simple priests qua tales have nought at all to doe Beside the Authors principle and the probations thereof conclude all that you here doe require for they inferre the unlawfulnesse of any majoritie of one Church Officer over another without Christs appointment from so cleere texts of Scripture and so sound grounds of uncontroverted Divinity as you find not your selfe disposed to answer any one of them While as you require proof in that place for all the other parts of our Discipline you are unreasonable When you have given satisfactorie answers to all that is brought in the head of Episcopacy it will be then time and no sooner to proceed unto other Articles which so long as Episcopacy stands were needlesse to be spoken of In your contrary argumentations you undertake to prove a very strange conclusion Your great words extolling Episcopacie are full of vanitie That the order of Bishops is no lesse Apostolicall then the very Creed and to be received with no lesse faith then the very Scriptures yea with much more as it seems you import for you equal the Scriptures and Bishops in this that both are alike universall and unquestioned traditions but in this you seeme to give Bishops a surer ground then you grant to Scriptures for the ground whereupon you here and many of your fellowes elswhere embrace the Scriptures is sole Tradition but the grounds whereupon you receive the order of Bishops is not sole tradition but sundry passages of Scripture also as you alleage This your mighty Conclusion you prove not by any argument but onely by a number of big words borrowed from the Papists in this same and many more subjects You tell us that many Scriptures are alleaged for Episcopacy and that these Scriptures are exponed in your sense by all the Fathers yea by all Writers for fifteene hundred yeeres I hope that your selfe will finde it reason that wee be permitted to take your great words for nought but vaine ecchoes in the Aire while you be pleased to produce at least some one Scripture some one Father some one Writer which here you have not done Also while you would have us taking it on your naked word that all times all places all persons are for Bishops and that for such Bishops as you here expreslie describe to whom alone it belongs to rule as it is proper for the inferiour Presbyters to be ruled suffer us to say that you are greatly mistaken till wee have heard some one of your proofs Your patience will here I hope be the greater when you read in the subsequent writt for this our contradiction more Scriptures and Fathers then you in haste are like satisfactorily to answere The question of Episcopacie discust In that same short writ you will see all the Scriptures and the most pregnant passages of antiquity which the best learned on your side are accustomed to produce answered by the ancients themselves so cleerely that while you give some evidence to the contrarie Indifferent men will pronounce that wee have but too good reason to avow Episcopacie as your selfe in the same place describes it to be a plant which God never set in his garden to bee a meere stranger to the ancient Church for some hundred yeeres and ever while the Pope had usurped mainly by the help of his Episcopall jurisdiction many Antichristian priviledges Your consequences besides the palpable errour of your Antecedent are weake vitious and inconsequent though your Episcopacie be an Antichristian errour yet it will not follow that all people who are subject to it must be condemned as Antichristian and false worshipers of God for you know that one fault and one quality is not sufficient to put on the subject an absolute denomination What you adde of the fountaine and originall of Presbyteries it shews if not your ignorance yet your great forgetfulnesse not onely what Cyprian and other of the ancients have written of the Presbyteries in their times but also what your selfe within a few pages does write of Presbyteries which you could admit though with an Episcopall Moderator This is the matter of your first six pages To the Authors first argument the answer is Popish and nought upon the Authours Principle when you come to his Arguments your Answeres are shorter but nothing better The first Argument That these places of Scripture which of purpose and most punctually set downe the offices of Gods house especiallie the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles to Timothy and Titus speak not at all of your Bishops You first deny the Argument albeit in your deniall you are so rationall as neither to give any reason
for what you say nor to answere any of the proofes whereby the Author confirmed his assertion Then you deny the ground whereupon the argument is builded The Principle which before in the proper place you durst not deny but rather did insinuate your granting of it however the Authours Probation of that Principle stands as yet untouched While you tell us here that Tradition is a sufficient ground for Episcopacie though Scripture were lacking you but joine with your Brethren the Canterburians who upon this ground presse upon us already their Altars Crosses Images the primacie of the Pope and much more and shew their minde by this doore to let in upon us the whole flood of Antichristian abominations when they find their season especially as your self here does professe any matter of practice of discipline of government This your popish errour of tradition is a very generall and catholike one which shakes not one or two but all the ground-stones of Protestant reformations The Authours second Argument is The second you answere by a nonsense and childish toy That no inferiour officer in the new testament carries the name of any superiour but so it is that a Presbyter every where carries the name of a Bishop Therefore a Presbyter is not an inferiour officer to a Bishop What here you bring is so far from the shew of any answere that it is like you have not conceived the drift of the Argument only the non sense of your reply is compensed with your extraordinary quicknesse to take your adversarie twice in his own argument in his owne net first you will put him to a non plus by an Interrogatory where then are ruling Elders by their names distinguished you have read I believe the 1. Timothy 5.17 there you may see ruling Elders by their name and surname cleerly distinguished from Preachers of the word you know also that there are a number of passages of the Fathers for these ruling Elders in the booke of Gersombucerus which the boldest of your party for all their big words and exclamations in the eares of silly people durst never yet after twenty two yeeres advisement so much as offer to answere Thereafter you triumph as if you had drawn from your Adversaries own pen by an ocular demōstration the ful proof of your whol cōclusion The superiority of a Bishop to a Presbyter by divine right because forsooth the author says That Bishop and Pastor which are all one are made by the Apostle superiour to a Presbyter Wee did not believe that any man of the least acquaintance with these controversies had beene ignorant of that common and triviall homonomie of the word Presbyter and Elder sometimes taken for a preaching Elder sometimes for a ruling Elder and sometimes for both The Author with the Scriptures makes a Pastor a Bishop a preaching elder to be altogether one and in nothing to differ but as three synonimous names of one and the same officer which by divine right is indeed superiour to a ruling Elder or Presbyter this no man ever did question but no way superiour to a preaching Elder of whom alone is all the present question The Authors third and fourth Argument confirmed strongly by a number of pregnant Scriptures are all utterly mispent To the third and fourth argument no syllable of answere appears and not one word of answere made to either of them His fifth Argument The fifth is in shew granted That by Christs institution the constant practice of the Apostles the power of ordination and jurisdiction is never committed to one Bishop but ever to a number of Preachers and others as is cleared by a multitude of manifest Scriptures This you cannot deny yet your heart will not permit you freely to grant it You are content that in ordination and jurisdiction Bishops should be assisted by Presbyters but the argument infers much more to wit that your Bishops in usurping to thēselvs the power of jurisdiction transferring of it to their carnal courts that their assuming by vertue of their office the power of ordinatiō though for the form they admit some Presbyters to be their assistāts in giving of orders that both these faculties which make not the abuse but the two main limbs and integrall parts of the office it selfe are wicked practices against Christs ordinance not to be reformed but presently abolished with a great remorse that with a high hand for so long a time these tyrannous usurpations have bin maintained The sixt Argument was from the 22. The sixt is absurdly answered Luke 25. where Christ forbids all Pastors to accept any Majority or preheminence over their brethren This the Author proves from Scripture Reason and Antiquitie to evert the office of Bishops All that you answere is that this place does not forbid the Apostles to accept any degree of Honour above their brethren wherein they may govern them for their profit It follows then that by this place Bishops are not hindered to assume as great authority over the Church as the greatest Emperours ever had over the bodies or Christ himselfe as you confesse here over the soules of men Having evinced the unlawfulnesse of Episcopacie it selfe by the former Arguments The Authors first reason against all limitation of Episcopacie is but slighted nothing enervate by all your Opposition in the rest of the treatise the Author reasons against the lawfulnesse of the least degrees and best limitations of that evill his first argument is well confirmed with Scripture and reason you answere but to one piece casting by the first and strongest parts of it to wit all parts all degrees all meanes all appearances of the discharged evill you had good reason to cut off all these portions from the Argument for you saw that your distinction was not applicable to these for you will be loath to deny that Episcopacie howsoever limitate is some degree some part some mean some appearance not by accident but of its own nature of that Episcopacie which now stands in England The part of the Argument which you take in hand is not sufficiently answered for you clear your distinction with no more then your own simple assertion That limited Episcopacie is not in it selfe but alone by Satans malice either a cause or a beginning or a provocation to Episcopacie as now it stands Surely that effect which has followed limited Episcopacie in all places where ever it has dwelt may not well be denyed to be naturall unto it however you dare not apply your distinction for it will sound harshlie in the eares of your Neighbours that limited Episcopacie should be a beginning a provocation by the malice and craft of the Devill of that Episcopacie which now in Rome and England has place The Author in the next place by cleer Scriptures does prove The second is unwittingly granted That the reformation of Episcopacie must be taken not from the times of the posteriour Fathers but from
government which was universall in the ancient Church was seated in the body of Presbyteries the very name whereof till the sitting down of this Parlament all of you did abhorre cane pejus et angue If there remain any drop of ingenuous blood you would proclaim openly and no more mutter within your teeth that your late injurious errour and without further delay your selfe be the first and most earnest Solicitor of the Parlament for the re-erection in all the Kingdome of these Presbyteries which now at last you confesse were universally in use in all the purer times of antiquity As for that which you desire to bee the State of the question English Episcopacie is a late corruption a meere stranger to the ancient Church whether ever there was a Presbytery without a Bishop over it you will I hope bee content after the fashion of reasonable men to speake of things not of names you will make no question with us about the name of Bishops which wee never deny to be frequent both in Scripture and antiquity But the thing signified by this name An officer as all your partie describes him who in his Diocesse hath the power of Ordination and Jurisdiction by vertue of his office This is the subject of all our question You affirme that in the ancient times Bishops in this Sense were set over Presbyteries Wee do deny We should be glad to see your Affirmation proved that ever there was in the Church of God any such Bishops before the Pope had brought his Bishoprick to the Cope-stone of Antichristianisme Our negative wee have laboured to prove in the following treatise by more passages of antiquity then you will have leasure in haste to answere As for the Bishops of the ancient Church which agree with yours onely in the naked name but in the essentiall parts of the office doe differ as much as the Duke of Venice this day from the Duke of Muscovie as the Emperours of Rome in the dayes of Seneca from the old Imperatores in the time of the Common-wealth The question about them will bee whether their right in these anciēt times was divine or human whether they stood by Apostolick tradition or alone by Ecclesiasticall constitution established at the Churches pleasure and so by her free will removeable You will be a better disputer then any of your side who yet have appeared if you can make good the first yea that you can prove the second to have been universal we do not believe If every Church would search their originall rights as they of Scotland have done their own readily as these have found their Church in the most ancient times governed by Presbyters without any bishops at all so much as in name for some hundred yeers so many other nationall Churches might finde the same upon the like diligence of tryall however when it comes to the exactest search it will appeare that Episcopacie was at most but an humane Ecclesiastick constitution neither more ancient more universall nor received upon any better grounds then the Primacie of the Patriarch of Rome then the manifold fraternities of the Monkes Fryers and Nunnes These though according to your friends assertion so anciently so universally so piously established that all the reformed and England among the rest are much to be blamed both for their first rashnesse to reject and there too long lingring since to restore them yet as England did never repent the casting out of the former according to the example of her sisters abroad so now wee believe if shee may be pleased to follow the same example in casting out the other shee shall have as little cause of sorrow The Author did shew at length the vanity of their expectation who deceive themselves with hopes to get Bishops kept in order by the bonds of any imaginable limitations No caveats are able to keepe Bishops long in order for the demonstration hereof he sets downe the caveats whereby the Scottish Kirke and Kingdome did bind their Bishops then which England can not invent harder this day for theirs The knot cannot be faster tied The Scots had their Bishops consent subscription and solemn oath The King in person in the generall Assembly did ratifie the bargaine numbers of Parliaments did establish the liberties of Presbyteries Sundry reasons the Authour brings to cleer that England is not able at this time to employ such meanes to keepe their Bishops low as Scotland then did use your answere to all is compendious you say that all your adversaries arguments are weake but how your saying may be proved you take not time to tell us The Author in the end of his writ makes answere to a number of the common jargous of Prelaticall men Presbyteriall government a heavier hammer to schisme then Episcopall especially that of Schisme in the Church and danger to the State which by the removall of Episcopacie they take upon them to prophesie will certainly fall out To both these Objections hee gives a number of very satisfactory and grave replies In your answer you misken well neere them all These few you picke out are cast in a strange confusion here and there in your Papers Against his replies to the first objection of Schisme you rejoinder that the divisions of New England are witnesses of these Schismes which proceed from the want of Episcopacie you do well to speake to us of men in an other World with whose estate we are not acquainted but can you say that there are half so many Schismes in New England where Bishops are not as we see in Old England where Bishops are in their full Strength Speak of the things we know Behold the Churches of Europe from whence Bishops are banished Scotland France Holland Swize Geneva c. Did you ever heare of any either Schisme or Heresie in these places except when Presbyteriall government was suppressed did that discipline any sooner get leave to employ its native strength but in a short time it made the Countries where it dwelt free of all these evills It is made evident in the next place If Bishops stand schisme in England must increase that the keeping of Episcopacie on foot any longer in all probability will fill the Church of England with many pitifull divisions both amongst themselves at home and from all their Neighbours abroad concerning the reformed Churches over sea you answer that in time bigon you have kept good correspondence with them notwithstanding of all the difference in discipline but truly the correspondence you speake of is to be ascribed much rather to the patience and long suffering of your good Neighbours then to any well deserving of your Bishops for their doctrine in the point of Episcopacie is cleerly Schismaticall as you may see in the Pedagogick and Master Likes Letter of Andrews to Muleine and in other of your Prelaticall writs where your men with the Papists by all the arguments they can invent do presse the Reformed Churches
this proposition All the lawfull offices of the Church are appointed by God in his holy word This serves both for a Major to the first argument and a Principle for all the ensuing discourse The Authour proves his Principle by a number of cleere Scriptures by many evident reasons deduced from Scripture and diverse grounds of the most intelligent adversaries what oppose you to all this That the reader may not observe how you speake to the point you cast up at the entry a quantity of dust to marre his sight you lay downe a Principle nothing pertinent to the purpose You propone a number of questions which come not neere the Proposition of your party when at last you come to your answer you will neither grant nor deny nor distinguish your adversaries Proposition nor dare you oppose any thing to the manifold arguments whereupon it is builded onely you fall in before the time and out of the due place upon the Hypothese of Episcopacie and by way of contrary argumentation with some old Popish flourishes of words you insinuate to the simple rather then prove to any intelligent minde that your Episcopacie as an Apostolike institution is to be embraced with a divine faith no lesse then the Creed or the most holy Scripture Your Principle is That all would be carefull to keep the publike peace as also Your impertinent principle concerns none but your selfe That no man for gain of things temporall would lose eternall Your Falcon flight is here so high your springs so far away your conduit pipes so crooked that he must have a skilled eye who can perceive the ways how you bring home your waters for any use to the purpose in hand Doe you thinke that these who petition the Parliament for rooting out of Episcopacie e P. 2. That men be not in their consultations so misled either by some appearances of godlinesse and faire colours of extraordinary zeale as thereby to hazard the disturbance of the common quiet which yet as the whole I le are now eye-witnesses is the proper crime of your dearest friends for who else to keepe upon their heads their tottering Mitres did draw the King and all his Dominions to the very brink of the late desperate danger The other halfe of your Principle were very expedient to bee enlarged and gravely applyed to these whom it concernes You cannot bee ignorant who these men are who these Yeeres past upon no other grounds that can be conjectured but only their own temporall advantages and worldly feares have betrayed the eternall truths of God Who these are who so long have sate still in a lethargick quietnesse and yet cannot bee gotten awaked to break off their dumbe silence when Arminianisme and all the heads of the Canterburian Popery from so many Pulpits and Presses have been over-spreading the whole Land The questions which so severely you urge to be answered Your first questions answered needed not to have been at all proponed Anent your first suppone we grant that salvation may be obtained under Episcopacie what then will this inferre that Bishops necessarily must be retained and that their rooting out is needlesse All your friends confesse that under the Pope and Cardinals salvation may be by all and is by the most obtained Will you therefore conclude that the ejection of the Pope and Cardinals out of England was a needlesse work Your friends do so indeed f Vide Ladens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 3. And so your Episcopall principles force them but I hope the Parliament to whom you submit your Treatise will be loth in haste by your perswasion to bring back the Pope and Cardinals Authoritie How many good works your Bishops have forced men to omit and how many evill to commit search the Registers of the House of Commons and you shall want no store Shall the Reformers be in great darknesse and the Martyrs miserable if in their days there was in the Church any thing which they were not able to amend or which came not in their minde to complain of Did any Martyr of the Reformed Church ever die in the quarrell of Episcopacie or Ceremonies Did their persecutors require them to seale any of these things with their bloud Was it any disgrace to these Martyrs that Queen Elizabeth rectified many things in King Edwards Liturgie and went beyond that Reformation which in their dayes was attained Your second questions are not unlike the first Also your second for their pertinencie All the Reformed World is fully agreed to have Episcopacie overthrown onely some few of the English Church for their own interest do oppose There is as great an harmony among all in setting up of Presbyteries and Synods as in casting out the old rubbish of Bishops and their Courts If some few of the English be scrupulous about the limits bounds and extent of the power of Synods It is no marvell Episcopall tyranny has bred and fostered more Schismes in England then have been heard of in all the Reformed Churches beside If this fountain of Schisme were once well stopped We make no question but as in Scotland Holland France Swize Geneva and many places in Germany there is no discord so like wayes in England one or two well governed generall Assemblies would amicably put an end to all the questions that are or need to be moved about the Discipline or any thing else whatsoever What you enquire further of the divine right of Presbyterie of the places of Scripture brought to prove it of the sense and consequences of the Scriptures In all reason you are obliged to heare with us great Patience avow that the Scripttures we bring do infer necessarily and cleerly our Concusion till you brought some materiall answer to the contrary The last of your Questions Your last Question answered is but a flash of your Rhetorick faculty of exaggeration your self must make answer to it for you do say that God discharges under pain of damnation all that is unlawfull and that every thing is unlawfull which is against the Word of God That Presbyters by the Word of God have the power of laying on the hands and of using the keyes you will shortly grant that therefore an Episcopacie should be permitted to spoile these Presbyters of the priviledges which God in his word has granted unto them or to usurpe unto themselves and devolve on their Officials the Rites of the inferiour Clergie you dare not deny to be a wrong which deserves amending At last you come to the purpose The Authors principle left unbrauled the Authours Principle but you finde it so hote that you dare not stand long upon it You tell us first that the Authours discourse upon this Principle is written with much art and eloquence for insinuation with the unwary Reader Who pleaseth to read the writ it selfe shall see that all the art of the Authour is in a very plain discourse to couch so briefly as is
to embrace their Episcopacie as an Apostolike institution the want whereof puts them from the very being of a Church makes the calling of their Preachers to be unlawfull without any right This wound I grant your Bishops when they have given it go about incontinent to cure but in vaine for if their ground of Episcopacies divine right hold it is not possible to defend the calling of these Ministers who refuse Episcopall Ordination While here you prefer for number and equall both for learning and pietie the Lutheran Churches to all the rest of the Reformed we doe not marvell since you contemne them both so farre that when they are joined together being compared with the Roman Church and the Grecian which follows the Roman in the most of her errours and Idolatries to be but a few persons in the West of Europe not comparable with all the Christians as you speake Pag. 12. upon the face of the earth You professe at last it is a small thing to you to differ from all the Reformed when you joine with the ancient Kirke in the first three hundred Yeeres we have shewn before the vanitie of this Language for in Episcopall Government you differ little lesse from the ancient Kirke then from the Reformed of whom yee were speaking for the ancient Presbyterie is a stranger to your Land and your Episcopacie would be as great a stranger in any Christian Kirke for the first five hundred Yeers as the drink of Muscovia would be this day in Venice or the Empire of Tyberius in Rome in the days of Cato the elder The Authour named the jealousies that would be inavoidable betwixt the two Kirks of England and Scotland if Episcopacie which the one with the King and all the Worlds consent hath cast downe should by the other bee kept on foot upon this passage you fall once and again at the first time that you may have a larger scope for a tract of your modestie you draw a passage from another farre distant place of the Authours writ where hee sayes no more but that vices contrarie to pietie righteousnesse and sobrietie where they doe raign are certaine forerunners and causes of many calamities judgements and changes of States Kingdomes and Families This you cut out from its own place and joine with the fore-named sentence that from both you may make out your verie modest conclusion that your author more like a Turkish Darvise then a Minister of the Gospel does threaten to overthrow Bishops by the bloudie Sword by the change of States Families and Kingdomes and that not the author alone but also all the Presbyterians yea the Presbyteriall government it self is guiltie of persecuting the persons and tyrannously pressing the souls of men no lesse then the papists if this be your stile when your mood is calme how crabbed must your dialect be when you are commoved When in your roving you fall the second time upon this same point you answer somwhat more pertinently then is your custome That you trust the Scots will count it as unreasonable to have their discipline pressed upon the English as they did esteem it to have the English pressed upon them but I pray you what if the Scots should leave here their own way and follow your example might any of you in reason complaine of such a retaliation Did ever your Bishops give over to force upon the Scots the English Government with all their might till the whole Isle was in armes and in the midst of a dangerous war Left they ever their designe till God the King and the Parliament made them unable for a further prosecution thereof It is like that the Scots will be loth to follow that your example Yet certainly they have all the reason of the World to perswade with all their power their Brethren of England to joine with them and all the Reformed everie where to batter downe that unhappie Episcopacie without any resting till the greatest Bishop the Antichrist himself from whom the Prelates of England confesse they draw the line of their pedigree be overthrowne and quite abolished If in this no lesse noble then necessary enterprise the English will bee lacking to themselves in this season of so golden an occasion the Scottish cannot faile to register for the posterity a Protestation of their great and too well grounded feares that Episcopacie in England may well change the habit but never the nature that as it has beene ever since the Reformation a bitter fountain of almost all the troubles that hath vexed the Scotish Kirk so it shall remain like it self a Spring of future woes to the Churches of the whole Isle The domestike divisions which are like to encrease amongst the Subjects of England if that root wee speak of be not drawne up and cast over Sea towards Rome whence it came the author expresseth them cleerely all that you answer is a salt gybe it is truly strange if any should make question that as to this day many of the most Godly in England who have been far from resisting authority in any thing yet could never follow the Doctrine of the Bishops so far as with them to believe that the sentence of authority whether Civill or Ecclesiasticke was a sufficient argument to perswade their conscience that Bishops were a holy ordinance so hereafter that many more who walk most carefully according to the rule of Gods law will refuse to submit their hearts to the government of Bishops though after the losse of their cares their Heads should be chopped off from their shoulders The Authour in his Answer to the second ordinarie Objection anent the danger of change No hazard to the State in changing the present government of the Church propones a number of very wise considerations whereby he makes it evident that presbyteriall Government will much better accord with the estate of England then Episcopall all these you passe by in your answer only you snatch at a word or two in some few of them The Author upon presupposition of his first principle that no Office might be permitted in the House of God without his own appointment inferreth that as a man would be loth to suffer any of his servants to place in his house Governours beside his own knowledge so that Christ will not be content when any does erect in his Church Bishops to be guides which hee did never ordain You touch not the point while yee tell us that a Wiseman would never permit a Democratie to be erected in his Family and so that none would set up a Presbyterie in the Church a Presbyterie is not a Democracie but be what ever it may the reason here proceeds alone from the authoritie of a Master to plant in his owne house what Government he will without libertie for servants to dispute the qualitie thereof In the current of his Discourse You snatch at some few of the Authours words but let passe without answer the most
of his matter amongst other interrogations the authour did question if in a whole Synod there was none meet to presede but only one perpetually For it is well known that in every dioces there is a number much meeter for any good service then the Bishop Of this harmlesse question you make a great quarrell and compare the authour to Cora your selfe to Aaron and his interrogation to the rebellious speeches of that wicked man Numb 16. When the whole has sufficiently overthrown all the matter of Episcopacie whether absolute or limitate hee bringeth sundry arguments why the verie name of a Bishop would not be retained but you are not pleased to take notice of any one of them In the last two pages verie cleerlie by divers evidences he declareth the great and rare opportunitie which God hath put in the hand of this present Parliament to remove the whole root of Episcopacie with as great ease as to cut off its branches all this you misken only to give us a further taste of the temper of your modest Spirit you insinuate Pag. 14. that the greatest opportunitie you can remark in this season is for men by fraud and force to worke out their owne ends When you have done with the authour The right of Presbyteries is divine not humane only you turn your selfe to two other sorts of men first to these who presse Presbyterian Discipline upon a meere humane right who these are I doe not know if any such be it seems they are more unconsiderate then your verie self and many others of the Prelaticall faction who dare not now denie what ever before was their language the divine right of the Presbyterie that the principall members thereof the preaching Presbyters are invested by God with the power of Ordination and Jurisdiction though the Bishops of England ever since the Reformation have spoiled them of their due and kept them in slaverie as much altogether if not more as the Romish Bishops doe their inferiour slaves of the Clergie this day The two considerations you bring to beare off these men are both impertinent Your plea for keeping up of Bishops is the very same which the Papists used against King Henry the Eighth for the upholding of the Pope and Monks The first was pressed with much more acuracie and eloquence then you or any of your partie can use by More the Chancelor and the Cardinall of Rochester in the dayes of Henrie the eighth it was the ordinarie and passionate declamation of these men that the Popes authoritie was ever reverenced in England since it was Christian That for many ages it had been confirmed by numbers of Parliaments That Abbots and Priors were a considerable part of the Parliament at least foure times more then Bishops That Monkes Fryers and Nuns had been established in all times in all places That the casting out of these would be a change exceeding dangerous for the State That the keeping of the things with the removall of the abuses would be a reformation satisfactory to all reasonable complainers This here is your most specious plea answered long agoe by the actions of King Henry King Edward Queene Elizabeth to use now any verball reply were but superfluous What you speake of the great learning of your Bishops suppone it to be true yet you are exceedingly prejudicate if you see not as much if not more of that quality in far mo of the English Divines who never were Bishops these few whose eminencies hath kythed in the episcopall charge might have advanced further as themselves will confesse both in learning and pietie if they never had beene burthened with Episcopall distractions Your gloriation of the honour done by strangers to your Divines wee doe not envie only we conceive you mistaken when you apply the respects done to the fame of the Church of England unto the persons of the Bishops let bee to their Episcopacie what ever respect that gratious Kirk has gotten from any stranger we believe it might have been multiplied if their Bishops had long ago bin abolished for they their tail hath beene allways the onely subject of feare and restraint of the full and plenary affections of forreigne Churches towards their Sister of England Your selves are forc'd to agree unto all the confiderable changes that are requifite To fall out upon that Common place of changes in Church or State it doth not well become you since both your selfe and all these of your Prelates who would be conceived to have any sponke either of pietie wisdome or moderation doe willingly consent to the far greatest part of the change whereby you would affright the State at this time for your selfe along all this Treatise and the prime of your Prelates in the draughts of Government that come from their hands seem to acknowledge the necessitie of erecting Presbyteries over all the Land and pulling at last from the Bishops the power of Ordination and Jurisdiction which too long they have unjustly possessed that therewith the Presbyteries and Synods may bee invested to whom by Divine Right they grant it belongs Further the putting downe of the Chancellour and Officiall Courts as meerly abusive the removing also of all the Clergy from Secular employments and so from the House of Parliament What more is petitioned will not introduce any farther change either of custome or Laws that is considerable while therefore your selfe doe offer to begin or at least to goe on with the far greatest part of the change you ought not to be heard in opposing some farther Reformation then you can agree to upon the pretended danger of alteration Your other consideration is lesse pertinent to the purpose The world has had too long and too heavie experience of the ungracious fruits of Episcopacie but more injurious to your professed modesty your prudence here is not ruled by reason while you advise the holding out of the required discipline for some yeers till by experience you have seene the fruits of it amongst your neighbours is not the experience of twice forty yeeres and above which many places have felt both of the Presbvteriall and Episcopall discipline more then sufficient in all the reformed Churches wee see powred out upon the Presbytery by the hand of God the first author of it plentifull blessings Wee see Episcopacie cursed in every soile it commeth with very bad consequences in the Romish Churches this government is the powerfull instrument of Satan to bar out the light of the Gospel in England and Scotland wee have seene grow upon it the Aples of strife superstition pride and many other evils till of late it did become the horse whereupon came poasting to the whole Isle Arminianisme Popery and a bloudy warre for the hazard of the lives estates liberties and all that was dear to any man if the miraculous hand of God had not cast the Horse his rider in the ditch of his vengeance those that would wait any longer to get