which the Spirit gave him by miracles § IX How our Saviours threatning was fulfilled § X. The sin against the Holy Ghost a resisting of the Gospel-Dispensation § XI 2. Murdering of the Prophets a sin against the Holy Ghost as he is particularly a Spirit of Prophesie § XII This particularly applied to our Saviour and the state of the Gospel § XIII 3. Resisting the influences of the Holy Ghost in us Applied to the Jews § XIV to the Christians § XV. According to the Hellenistical Philosophy § XVI XVII XVIII 4. Resisting the Government of the Church which was then ordered by the Spirit § XIX Separation from the Canonical Assemblies of the Church a sin against the Holy Ghost § XX. Concerning the punishment of this sin against the Holy Ghost and the way of arguing used by the Writers of the New-Testament from Old-Testament precedents § XXI XXII p. 294. CHAP. XV. 2. Directly That Salvation is not ordinarily to be expected without Sacraments § I. This proved 1. concerning Baptism 1. By those Texts which imply the dependence of our Salvation on Baptism 1. Such as speak of the Graces of Baptism § II. 1. The Spirit of God is said to be given in Baptism and so given as that he who is not baptized cannot be supposed to have it § III. The Spirit it self is absolutely necessary to Salvation as to his actual influences § IV. as to his constant presence as a living and abiding Principle § V. That the Spirit is first given in Baptism This proved from our new Birth 's being ascribed to our Baptism § VI. It is safe to argue from Metaphorical expressions in a matter of this nature St. Joh. iii. 5 considered § VII Water to be understood in this place Literally § VIII These words might relate to our Saviours Baptism § IX The Objection concerning the supposed parallel place of baptizing with the Holy Ghost and with fire § X. The fire here spoken of a material fire and contradistinct to the Holy Ghost § XI Our Saviours baptizing with the Holy Ghost and with fire as well applicable to our Saviours ordinary baptism as to that of the Apostles at Pentecost § XII The true reason why this descent of the Holy Ghost in Pentecost is called a Baptism was because it was a consummation of their former Baptism by Water § XIII The reason why this part of their Baptism was deferred so long § XIV Other instances wherein the Holy Ghost was given distinctly from the Baptism by Water § XV XVI XVII Our Saviour alluded herein to the Jewish Notions concerning Baptismal Regeneration § XVIII What the Rabbinical Notions are § XIX How agreeable to the Doctrine of the New-Testament § XX. The Notions of the Hellenistical Jews and of the Philosophers § XXI XXII XXIII How imitated by our Saviour § XXIV An Objection § XXV Answered § XXVI XXVII 2. Grace of Baptism forgiveness of sins § XXVIII XXIX XXX That unbaptized Persons cannot be supposed to have received the benefits of the washing of the blood of Christ or of the Mystical Baptism proved from two things 1. That all who would be Christians are obliged to receive even the Baptism by Water § XXXI 2. That every one who comes to Baptism is supposed to continue till then under the guilt of his sins § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV 2. The same dependence of Salvation on Baptism proved from those Texts which speak of the Priviledges of Baptism § XXXVI The same thing proved 2. from those Texts which expresly ascribe our Salvation to our Baptism § XXXVII A sum of the Argument from 1 Pet. iii. 21 § XXXVIII from other Texts § XXXIX The Application § XL. p. 321. CHAP. XVI Things to be premised § I. 1. That this dependence on the Episcopal Communion for a valid Baptism will alone suffice so far for my purpose as to discourage the perpetuating any opposite Communion § II III IV. Inference 1. That if this were granted even the absteining of pious Persons from the lawful Communion would be very rare § V. Inf. 2. That even those few pious Persons who after all diligence used to inform themselves and all lawful condescensions could not submit to the terms of the lawful Communion would yet never perpetuate so much as their Non-Communion § VI VII 2. Premisal That it cannot be expected that this Sacrament of the Lords Supper should be as necessary as that of Baptism § VIII The necessity of the Lords Supper to Salvation proved from the Mystical style by which this whole matter is expressed in the Scripture And that by these degrees 1. The Life of particular Members of the Mystical Body of Christ is in the Scripture supposed to depend on a constant repetition of vital influences from the common vital Principle as the Life of particular Members in the Natural Body does § X. 2. The Scripture also supposes the Life of particular Members to depend as much on their conjunction with the whole Mystical Body in order to their receiving these repeated influences as the Life of particular Members in the natural Body depends on their conjunction with the whole natural Body § X. 3. The Church with which it was supposed so necessary for particular Members to be united in order to their participation of this Spiritual Life is plainly supposed to be the Church in this World and that visible Society of them which joyned in the same publick exercises of Religion in that Age when these things were written § XI XII 4. The Reasons used by the Sacred Writers for this purpose are such as concern the Church as a Church and so as suitable to the later Ages of the Church as those earlier ones wherein they were used first § XIII 5. In order to this Mystical Union with the Church it is absolutely necessary as far as an ordinary means can be so that we partake of the Lords Supper This proved from 1 Cor. x. 17 § XIV The same thing proved from the true design of the Eucharist rightly explained This done by these degrees 1. The design of our Saviour seems to have been the Mystical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so much spoken of in the Philosophy then received as the peculiar Office of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. In this Union the reason of our being in Christ is his being in us 3. Two things according to the Scripture to be distinguished in Christ his Flesh and Spirit and in both regards we are concerned that he be united to us § XV. 4. There are very material reasons why our Saviour should require this bodily Union in contradistinction to the Spiritual viz. the benefits which our Bodies in contradistinction to our Spirits may receive by it 1. That by this Corporal Union with Christ we may be made sensible of the interest he has in our Bodies and of our Obligation to serve him with our Bodies and to abstein from those sins which are seated in the Body The great necessity
from the Mystical style by which this whole matter is expressed in the Scripture And that by these degrees 1. The Life of particular Members of the Mystical Body of Christ is in the Scripture supposed to depend on a constant repetition of influences from the common vital Principle as the Life of particular Members in the Body Natural does § IX 2. The Scripture also supposes the Life of particular Members to depend as much on their conjunction with the whole Mystical Body in order to their receiving these repeated Influences as the Life of particular Members in the Natural Body depends on their conjunction with the whole natural Body § X. 3. The Church with which it was supposed so necessary for particular Members to be united in order to their participation of this Spiritual Life is plainly supposed to be the Church in this World and that visible Society of them which joyned in the same publick exercises of Religion in that Age when these things were written § XI XII 4. The Reasons used by the Sacred Writers for this purpose are such as concern the Church as a Church and so as suitable to the latter Ages of the Church as those earlier ones wherein they were first used § XIII 5. In order to this Mystical Union with the Church it is absolutely necessary as far as an ordinary means can be so that we partake of the Lords Supper This proved from 1 Cor. x. 17 § XIV The same thing proved from the true design of the Eucharist rightly explained This done by these degrees 1. The design of our Saviour seems to have been the Mystical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so much spoken of in the Philosophy then received as the peculiar Office of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. In this Union the reason of our being in Christ is his being in us 3. Two things according to the Scripture to be distinguished in Christ his Flesh and Spirit and in both regards we are concerned that he be united to us § XV. 4. There are very material reasons why our Saviour should require this Bodily Union in contradidistinction to the Spiritual viz. The benefits which our Bodies in contradistinction to our Spirits may receive by it 1. That by this Corporal Union with Christ we may be made sensible of the Interest he has in our Bodies and of our obligation to serve him with our Bodies and to abstein from those sins which are seated in the Body The great necessity of this in that Age. § XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX. 2. That by this means they might be assured of the Resurrection of their Bodies § XXI 5. Therefore according to the Practices and Conceptions then prevailing the Eucharist was the most proper means whereby this Bodily Union with Christ could have been contrived whether it be considered 1. As a Sacrifice And that either as an ordinary Sacrifice § XXII XXIII XXIV Or as a Federal Sacrifice § XXV Or 2. As a Mystery and this of the greatest sort The likeness between the design of the Heathen Mysteries and of the Blessed Sacrament The Mysteries were Commemorative and that generally of the sufferings of their Gods § XXVI They were performed by external Symbols Particularly Bread was a Sacred Symbol of Unity Observed in the Rites of Mithras among the Pythagoraeans § XXVII XXVIII In the antient way of Marriage by Confarreation and in Truces § XXIX And among the Jews § XXX The Mysteries designed particularly for the good of the Soul and that in the state of Separation § XXXI In the Mysteries they were obliged to Confession of sins and to undertake new Rules of living well § XXXII In the Mysteries it was usual to change the names of the things used in them without any thought of a change of Nature § XXXIII 6. Vpon these Principles and according to the nature of these Mystical contrivances this Bodily Union may very well be supposed to be made by our Saviours changing the name of Bread into that of his own Body § XXXIV XXXV XXXVI I HAVE hitherto shewn that the Grace conveyed in Baptism is necessary to Salvation and that it is confined to the external Sacrament of Baptism as the only ordinary means appointed whereby we may receive it I now proceed to prove the same thing concerning the other Sacrament that of the Lords Supper But before I set upon this it will be convenient to promise two things § II 1. THAT this dependence on the Episcopal Communion for a valid Baptism will alone suffice so far for my purpose as to discourage the perpetuating any opposite Communion All those Arguments which prove the Eucharist necessary will much more prove Baptism necessary without which the Eucharist cannot be had though on the contrary Baptism might be necessary if the Eucharist were not so Besides that our Adversaries themselves are more sensible of the necessity of Baptism than they are of the necessity of the Eucharist if not for Salvation it self absolutely yet at least for our comfort and assurance of it If therefore the validity of Baptism it self depend on the Authority of him who administers it and this Authority cannot be had without Episcopal Ordination thus much at least will follow that valid Baptism can only be expected in the Episcopal Communion Whence it will follow that the true Notion of a Church must also be confined to the Episcopal Communion Though a multitude invisibly united in the belief of the Christian Doctrines may be called a Church in a sence wherein that word is ordinarily used by our Adversaries for the Church of the Elect that is of Elect also in their ordinary Notion of that word for the Elect according to God's secret undiscernable purpose yet understanding a Church for an external Body Politick united among themselves by a visible confederation and as it is a priviledged Society of whose priviledges we may assure our selves by being Members of it and of whose Membership we can best assure our selves and as it is the seat of visible Discipline none can think that a Multitude of unbaptized Persons how penitent or believing soever can make up such a Church as this is Yet this is the sence of the Church of which it can be any comfort to any that he is a Member of it And this is the sence which is principally concerned in this present dispute § III THEY say indeed that God does not confine his Graces to his Sacraments Admit it were so But can they therefore say that whole Multitudes of Persons depending on Gods extraordinary favours can make up that priviledged Society which we call a Church or can they say that such Multitudes as these may have all the ordinary means of Salvation though they want the Sacraments If so what obligation can there be to receive the Sacraments at all when men may enjoy all the ordinary means of Salvation without them and be withall assured that they do enjoy them But indeed the Sacraments are the
so far from thinking the greater Mysteries absolutely necessary for him who had already been initiated in the lesser as that they usually prescribed a certain time before he who had received the less was capable of the greater Five years is commonly supposed to have been the Period prefixed for that purpose at least to the making an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for which a years space was requisite even after their receiving the greater Mysteries And it was taken for a great irregularity in the Case of Demetrius Poliorcetes that he was permitted to partake of both Mysteries at one time Plutarch Demetr And the Lord's Supper wherein Christ's suffering is so represented to our eyes and which was professedly instituted by Christ for that purpose that it might perform the office of the Heathen Images as the opposers of Images argued against the Patrons of them seems at once to exhibit all the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Christian Religion could admit of as well as the greater Mysteries themselves For my purpose it is sufficient that it be necessary for continuing the Salvability of Adults who have lost their Baptismal strength and Purity if they would continue and grow strong and ripe in that new Life which they have received in their Baptism None who survives his Baptism for any considerable while can think himself unconcerned in this Case as thus stated And therefore if this may be proved that it is necessary for the Salvation of such Persons as these are this will as much oblige such Persons to receive the Lords Supper often and consequently to submit to all unsinful Impositions that may be required from them as Conditions on which they may be admitted to receive it as they were at first obliged to get themselves baptized and to submit to all such unsinful conditions required by them who had alone the power of baptizing them § IX THIS will appear if our Brethren will be pleased to consider the importance of that Mystical stile wherein this whole matter is expressed in the Scripture that is if they will be pleased to continue the Allegory of Life and the Analogy between the natural Body and the Mystical Body of Christ so far at least as the sacred Writers themselves are pleased to continue it And sure that cannot be thought presumptuous To this purpose it is observable 1. That this Analogy between the Natural Body and the Mystical Body of Christ is continued in this that no Member in the Mystical Body can continue in that Spiritual Life of which it partakes by being a Member of that Mystical Body without a constant repetition of those vital influences by which it was first enlivened any more than a Member of the Natural Body can continue its Natural Life without a continual new supply of those vital influences from the head by which this Natural Life is maintained And therefore as it is certain that that Member which wants this continuation of vital influences does certainly decay and by degrees lose that Natural Life which is maintained by those influences though it be impossible to determine the certain Period wherein it shall die so it is by the same proportion of reasoning as certain that he who has not new influences from Christ continued to him is in a dying condition notwithstanding the Principle of new Life received by him in his Baptism If therefore the Eucharist be the same way an ordinary means of continuing this new Life as Baptism was of receiving it that is of communicating those new vital supplies from Christ the Head of this Mystical Body as Baptism was of the first infusion of this vital Principle it will be as necessary for those Adults of whom we are speaking who survive their Baptism as Baptism it self was to them when they first received it § X AND 2. The Scripture does further prosecute this likeness between the Natural Body and the Mystical Body of Christ that as it is impossible for any particular Member in the Natural Body to derive any vital influences from the Head unless it continue in conjunction with the whole Body so it is as impossible for any particular Member in the Mystical Body of Christ to derive the influences of Spiritual Life from Christ who is the Head of that Mystical Body any longer than it is united with the whole Mystical Body This appears plainly from that particular of this comparison that as in the Natural Body Members have their distinct situation some of them at a distance from the Head and they who are so receive their vital influences though from the Head yet not immediately but by the vessels through which they are communicated and by the influence of the nearer parts so that these vital influences are maintained and continued in the particular Members as well by their mutual influences on each other as by the common influences which they all receive from the Head so there are also supposed the like conveyances in the Mystical Body and the like distinction of offices in the Members of it by which they become necessary to each other as the Head is necessary to them all And this argument is purposely urged by the Apostle himself to let particular Christians understand their obligation to keep united with one another in order to their receiving vital influences from the Head And by the nature of the comparison here used it is plainly supposed that the advantage which the Members may expect from the mutual intercourse of each others gifts whilest they are united to each other in external Communion is not only extrinsecal by moving and exercising the good Principle within them but necessary intrinsecally for the preservation of that Spiritual Life which they are already supposed to enjoy as the Members in the Natural Body do not only lose the advantage of a sprightful vigorous Life but of Life it self by an interruption of their communication with each other And this is implyed in the similitude of the Vine where our Saviour expressly warns his Apostles Joh. xv 4 that as a branch cannot bear fruit of it self except it continue in the Vine so neither could they except they abided in him Where it is plain that Christ is not understood Personally but Mystically when they are supposed capable of abiding in him And this Mystical way of speaking is so familiar with St. John as well as our Saviour as that it cannot be thought strange that he should thus express himself § XI 3. THEREFORE the Church with which it was supposed so necessary for particular Members to be united in order to their participation of the influences of Spiritual Life is plainly supposed to be the Church in this World and that visible Society of them which joyned in the same publick exercises of Religion in that Age when these things were written This appears plainly from all the Apostle says concerning this Church of which he there speaks They were plainly an organized Body consisting
for this Application § VIII That this separation from their own particular Churches must necessarily infer a separation from the Catholick Church also The Objection proposed § IX Answ. If it were otherwise it would destroy all Discipline and therefore all the dividing parties who are for Discipline are obliged as well as we to answer this Objection and to be favourable to what we shall say in Answer to it § X XI A more particular Answer proving the thing principally designed 1. This pretence of Union with the Catholick Church can be no encouragement for any to neglect any means of continuing his Union with his own particular Church unless he may be assured that whilest he wants it he may notwithstanding continue united to the Catholick Church § XII 2. That Union with the Catholick Church of which we may be assured must be such as may appear to us by the use of those external ordinary means which God has appointed for mainteining that Union § XIII 3. In this way of judging he that would assure himself of his being united to the Catholick Church must do it by proving himself united to some particular visible Church by an external Communication in their Sacraments § XIV 4. The external Communion of another Church which while a separated Person does maintein he may have hopes of keeping still his Interest in the Unity of the Catholick Church must not be any other Communion within the Jurisdiction in which he lives and from which he is supposed to be separated This proved in regard of Usurping Members of the same Church § XV.XVI. and of unauthorized Members of other Churches within the same Jurisdiction § XVII XVIII 5. Such Separatists cannot maintein their title to Catholick Unity by being received into any other Churches though otherwise absolute and unaccountable to the Church from whence they are separated § XIX XX XXI This proved 1. The nature of the inconvenience incurred by deprivation of Communion in a particular Church is such as that it is impossible that the censure can be valid in that particular Church unless it be valid in others § XXII 2. Hence it follows that if such a Person be received to the Sacraments in another Church without as good an Authority for uniting him to the unity of the Catholick Church as that was by which he was deprived only on supposition of the continuance of his invisible unity with the Catholick Church notwithstanding his visible separation from a part of it such Sacraments must as to him be perfect Nullities § XXIII 3. No particular Church can by its Authority alone restore any to Catholick Unity who has been separated from it by another Church without the consent of the Church by which he was at first separated § XXIV 4. Hence it follows That all that can be done by other Churches receiving a Person separated from the Communion of his own Church can only be to judg of his case not so as to oblige the Church to which he belongs originally to stand to their judgment but only so far as concerns their own Jurisdiction § XXV XXVI XXVII 5. Whatever is necessary for the design of Gods establishment that he must by his design be obliged to ratifie whether he has expresly said he will do so or no. This applied § XXVIII The validity of the separation proved when it is the act of the Separatists themselves without any censures of Ecclesiastical Authority § XXIX XXX § I THE last thing which remains to be proved in my designed method is That the nature of this obligation to submit to unsinful conditions of their Episcopal Communion is such as will make them guilty of the sin of SCHISM who rather than they will submit to such conditions either separate themselves or suffer themselves to be excluded from Communion by their respective Diocesan Ordinaries And all that will be necessary to be said concerning this will be only to remember and apply what has been already proved throughout the body of the whole discourse It is therefore certain 1. That Schism as such is a dissolution of the Body and therefore Schism in the Ecclesiastical sence is a dissolution of the Church which is the Mystical Body of Christ a dividing of its Vnity wherein soever that may be conceived to consist If the Vnity of the Church consisted only in a Vnity of correspondence without any obligation to yield incumbent on one party rather than on any other then the crime of Schism would only be culpably chargeable on him who was chargeable with the breach that is who either began the separation on unsufficient reasons or who suffered himself to be excluded on terms of less importance to him than the correspondence So that in this way of tryal the whole Judgment concerning this matter depends upon the merit of the Cause Where there is no duty owing on either side there the whole reason of obligation to yield on one side must only be the reason of the thing its little momentousness in comparison with the momentousness of mainteining correspondence And as in this case the interest of the party is the only solid reason why he may be conceived to be obliged to yield so the most proper and competent Judg of this interest is supposed to be the party himself who is concerned in it As therefore the common interest of the several divided parties does in this way of judging no farther oblige any one to yield to the others terms than as it may appear that the common interest is more its own particular interest than the things to be yielded in regard of it so that even the acknowledgment that any thing is indeed for the common interest cannot oblige any to yield it barely as it is the common interest but as it is his own private interest and more so than the thing to be yielded for it so also in this Vnity of correspondence which is very well consistent with an equality between the several parties who are to maintein this correspondence every one is sui juris and therefore very justly to be determined by his own judgment concerning his own interest and cannot be obliged to renounce his own judgment in compliance with others concerning his own matters how much soever he may value their judgment otherwise above his own This therefore would be the only Notion of Schism if all the Members of the Church were equal or if all the difference between them were only such as would make a reverence due to some Persons for their eminent personal accomplishments so that still it fell short of a Subjection due to them in regard of any Office or Authority And I have accordingly observed that in this dispute concerning Schism Introd our Adversaries Notions are exactly fitted to this Hypothesis even of those of them who otherwise own a properly-coercive Authority of the Church over her particular Members § II BUT I confess this Notion of Schism is not sufficient
had never been censured This I the rather warn to let them see how they are in interest obliged to be favourable to the reasons which I am to produce on this Subject and withal that they are obliged to believe their own Objections false and to answer them as well as we are if they be for Discipline and think the reasons inducing them to it more cogent than their Objections § XII TO proceed therefore to my design of proving this necessary connexion between the Vnion of particular Churches with that of the Catholick Church I desire it may be remembred 1. That there can be no encouragement for any to venture to neglect the Vnity of particular Churches on pretence of their disability to deprive him of the Vnity of the Catholick Church unless he may be assured in that case of his being disunited from his own particular Church that he notwithstanding continues united to the Catholick Church It is not the real truth of the thing it self but the Arguments whereby this truth may appear to him that can afford a Person comfort who were concerned to practise it and I have shewn that the less comfortableness of such a condition is sufficient to oblige to all unsinful condescension rather than venture on it And therefore if it may but appear that the means of our assurance of our being united to the Catholick Church depend on our being united to particular Churches this will be sufficient to oblige all to keep to the Vnity of their particular Churches as they would assure themselves of their being united to the Catholick Church § XIII 2. THEREFORE when we speak of such a Vnion with the Catholick Church that may appear to us and afford us present satisfaction we must mean such an external Vnion as is made and mainteined by the use of those external ordinary means which God has appointed for that purpose And I have also shewn that the external Sacraments are those ordinary means of Divine institution for mainteining the Vnity of the Catholick Church and for obteining those Spiritual blessings to which all Members of the Catholick Church are intitled on account of their being Members of it All that I have said concerning this will reach the Catholick Church as well as the Church of the particular Jurisdiction Baptism does admit into the Catholick Church as well as into the particular Church where it is received And in the Lords Supper we profess our selves united to all Christians in general as well as with those who are present at the particular Communion And all who hold any efficacy in it do not deny but that we are made one with those with whom we profess our selves to be united Nor is any other external way pretended for uniting us to the Catholick Church besides these whereby we are united to our particular Churches at least none is pretended as of Divine institution And whatever may be pretended for other wâ—â— of Vnion with the Catholick Church may be the same way prevented in reference to the Catholick Church as I have prevented it in reference to their particular Churches in weakening the pretences of Separatists to Vnion with those Churches from which they are Separated And whatever I have said to shew the necessity of these external Sacraments to Salvation whether as Seals or Solemnities of the Covenant or as to the nature of the benefits conveyed by them do plainly prove at least the Negative for which I am alone concerned at present that none can be ordinarily assured of his being united to the Catholick Church without an external participation of the Sacraments § XIV HENCE it follows 3. That in this way of judging he that would assure himself of his being united to the Catholick Church must do it by proving himself united to some particular visible Church by an external Communication in their Sacraments I say only some particular visible Church because it is not requisite for this purpose that he be determinately of any one but it is sufficient that he be of any And by external Communion with some visible Church I do not mean that the whole Church must be present in the place where he does communicate but as he who communicates with two at the least besides the Minister which is the smallest number our Church allows of for a Communion does yet communicate at least with that whole Church of which those few are Members even according to the Independents themselves they who are present how few soever must be allowed at least to communicate in some sence even with the absents of their own Congregations because they are conteined under the same terms of Vnity with those who are present the same Vnity of Government and the same Vniformity of the terms of Communion so he that communicates visibly with any particular Church may on the same account be supposed to be in some sence even in visible Communion with the whole Catholick Church inasmuch as a visible correspondence is or ought to be mainteined between that particular Church and all others and consequently as he has reason to expect that if he were in any other Church he should be received on the same terms And on this account whoever receives the Sacrament though in a Wilderness yet must thereby profess himself a Member of some particular Church though I confess in thâ— case it must needs be a very imperfect one For he must receive it from the Priest as a Person Authorized to give it him And where there is Authority and Persons subject to that Authority there must be a Church in the sence in which I am now obliged to understand it as its Vnity is that of a Body Politick And because it is impossible to assure our selves of our being united with the Catholick Church but by our visible participation of the Sacraments and as impossible to partake of these Sacraments externally without partaking of them from a Person Authorized and impossible to do that without uniting our selves thereby to that Body Politick to which his Authority relates it must therefore be impossible on these terms for any to assure himself of his being united to the Catholick Church but by an external Communion in some particular Church At least therefore thus much must be granted that he who is separated from the Church in whose Jurisdiction he lives cannot have any pretence of continuing in the Vnity of the Catholick Church unless he be at the same time received into the Communion of some other particular Church If he be out of all particular Churches it is impossible to conceive how he can be in the Catholick Church and if he be out of their external Communion he must be out of the external Communion of the Catholick Church And to apply this observation closer to our Brethrens case I consider § XV 4. THAT this external Communion of another Church which while a separated Person does maintein he may have hopes of keeping still his interest
A further presumption for proving the same thing § XIII p. 156. CHAP. VIII 3. The participation in these external Solemnities with any legal validity is only to be had in the external Communion of the visible Church § I. The Church as taken for the body of the Elect uncapable of being communicated with externally § II III. That all things here contrived are exactly fitted for a visible Church and no other § IV V. p. 163. CHAP. IX 2. That in reference to the duty of particular Persons the visible Church wherein they may expect to find these ordinary means is the Episcopal in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed and particularly that Episcopal Communion under whose Jurisdiction the Persons are supposed to live § I. 1. The Episcopal Communion in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed is that visible Church to whose external Communion these ordinary means of grace are confined This proved by several degrees § II. 1. The ordinary means of grace are now confined to the Sacraments Two things premised The former § III IV. The later § V. The thing to be proved § VI. Proved two ways 1. Exclusively of other means of gaining that Grace which is necessary to Salvation besides the Sacrament § VII VIII 1. Of the Word Preached Some things premised § IX X XI XII 1. Much of the Grace conveyed by the Word Preached in the Primitive times was undoubtedly proper to those times and not fit to be expected now § XIII XIV XV. 2. There were reasons proper to those times why such Grace might be expected then which will not hold now for the conviction of the Persons who then received the Spirit § XVI 3. There were also other proper reasons necessary for the conviction of those with whom they had to deal § XVII 4. That Grace which might otherwise have been expected in attending on the Word Preached is yet not so probably to be expected in the Preaching of Persons unauthorized especially if they Preach in opposition to those who are Legally invested with Spiritual Authority § XVIII XIX 5. It is yet further doubtful whether the Grace which which may now be ordinarily expected at any Preaching whatsoever be so great as to be able to supply the want of Sacraments at least so great as to secure the Salvation of those who enjoy this Ordinance whilest they want the Sacraments § XX XXI 6. It is also very doubtful whether all the Grace which is supposed to accompany the Word Preached be any more than what is necessary to dispose the Auditors to receive and believe the truth of the Doctrines Preached to them or whether there be any the least ground to believe that they shall there receive that further Assistance which is necessary to help them to practise what they have thus received and believed § XXII XXIII XXIV 7. This first Grace of persuasion if we suppose it alone to accompany the Word Preached will fully answer the design of the Word Preached § XXV 8. The Grace here received seems to be only some actual influences of the Spirit which wicked men may receive whilest they continue so and which therefore cannot alone be thought sufficient for Salvation not the Person of the Divine Spirit himself § XXVI p. 166. CHAP. X. The exclusive Part proved 2. as to Prayer That neither this alone nor the Grace which may be expected in the use of it are sufficient for Salvation without the Sacraments The Objection proposed § I II. The Answer 1. That no Prayers can expect acceptance with God but such as suppose the use of the ordinary means and consequently of the Sacraments if they should prove such § III. 2. No Prayers can expect acceptance which are offered by a sinner continuing in the state of sin even at the same time when he offers them § IV. 3. It is more to be considered what is the ordinary means appointed by God than what is ordinarily observed by the best and wisest men § V. 4. It is no way safe for us to venture on our own Judgments concerning the design of God in instituting the Sacraments to neglect them This proved by several degreâ—â— It is hard to know the true design of the Sacraments § VI. They are not sure that raising Devotion by the sensible representations was the principal design of these Sacraments § VII They cannot assure themselves that this use of the sensible representations was the only or the principal end of the Sacraments § VIII Though they were sure of these things yet they have no reason whereby to be assured that God will be pleased with their taking upon them to judg of his designs and by that means allowing themselves the liberty of paying their obedience at their own discretion § IX 5. Another design of the Sacraments has been proved the confederating Subjects into a Body Politick and the obliging Subjects in it to a dependence on their Governours It is no way convenient that any should be excused from these establishments upon pretences to perfection They who were really perfect would not make this use of such pretences for their own sake § X. They would not do it for the sake of the publick § XI XII XIII They would not do it on account of the Divine actual establishment and the Divine assistances conveyed by the Sacraments which are necessary for perfection of the Person § XIV And of his Prayer § XV. 6. The Scripture no where allows such a degree of Perfection atteinable in this life as can in reason excuse from the reason of the Obligation to Ecclesiastical Assemblies All Members of the Church need the gifts of each other § XVI They need particularly those gifts which belong to Government § XVII All the other Members need the Head which cannot be understood of Christ but of Persons eminently gifted § XVIII This Head not a Head of Dignity only but also of influence and Authority § XIX Though they needed not the gifts of others yet they are obliged to joyn themselves in Ecclesiastical Societies in regard of the good they may do to others They are obliged to this as Platonists and as Christians § XX. p. 191. CHAP. XI 7. The Scripture gives us no encouragement to believe that any Prayers shall be heard which are made out of the Communion of the Church or even in the behalf of those that are so excepting those which are made for their Conversion This proved from St. John who was the only Apostle who lived to see the case of separation § I. St. Joh. xvii 9 § II. Where by being given to Christ is meant a being given by external Profession § III. By the World all they are meant who were out of the visible Society of the Professors of the Christian Doctrine § IV V. They are said to be in the World purely for this reason because they did not keep to the Society of the Church § VI. The same thing proved from 1
here proposed the Persons from whom they separate must be their Governours § III IV V VI VII Other things proved that are necessary for this Application § VIII That this separation from their own particular Churches must necessarily infer a separation from the Catholick Church also The Objection proposed § IX Answ. If it were otherwise it would destroy all Discipline and therefore all the dividing parties who are for Discipline are obliged as well as we to answer this Objection and to be favourable to what we shall say in answer to it § X XI A more particular Answer proving the thing principally designed 1. This pretence of Union with the Catholick Church can be no encouragement for any to neglect any means of continuing his Union with his own particular Church unless he may be assured that whilest he wants it he may notwithstanding continue united to the Catholick Church § XII 2. That Union with the Catholick Church of which we may be assured must be such as may appear to us by the use of those external ordinary means which God has appointed for mainteining that Union § XIII 3. In this way of judging He that would assure himself of his being united to the Catholick Church must do it by proving himself united to some particular visible Church by an external Communication in their Sacraments § XIV 4. The external Communion of another Church which while a separated Person does maintein he may have hopes of keeping still his interest in the Unity of the Catholick Church must not be any other Communion within the Jurisdiction in which he lives and from which he is supposed to be separated This proved in regard of Usurping Members of the same Church § XV XVI And of Unauthorized Members of other Churches within the same Jurisdiction § XVII XVIII 5. Such Separatists cannot maintein their title to Catholick Unity by being received into any other Churches though otherwise absolute and unaccountable to the Church from whence they are separated § XIX XX XXI This proved 1. The nature of the inconvenience incurred by deprivation of Communion in a particular Church is such as that it is impossible that the censure can be valid in that particular Church unless it be valid in others § XXII 2. Hence it follows that if such a Person be received to the Sacraments in another Church without as good an Authority for uniting him to the Unity of the Catholick Church as that was by which he was deprived only on supposition of the continuance of his invisible Unity with the Catholick Church notwithstanding his visible separation from a part of it such Sacraments must as to him be perfect Nullities § XXIII 3. No particular Church can by its Authority alone restore any to Catholick Unity who has been separated from it by another Church without the consent of the Church by which he was at first separated § XXIV 4. Hence it follows That all that can be done by other Churches receiving a Person separated from the Communion of his own Church can only be to judg of his case not so as to oblige the Church to which he belongs originally to stand to their judgment but only so far as concerns their own Jurisdiction § XXV XXVI XXVII 5. Whatever is necessary for the design of Gods establishment that he must by his design be obliged to ratifie whether he has expresly said he will do so or no. This applied § XXVIII The validity of the separation proved when it is the act of the Separatists themselves without any censures of Ecclesiastical Authority § XXIX XXX p. 564. CHAP. XXVIII The usefulness of this discourse as to its two great designs § I II. 1. For the most likely Notion of SCHISM Two advantages of this way of stating the Government of the Church above others § III. 1. That the Government thus contrived will be most wisely fitted for practice § IV V. Because best fitted to the capacity of the illiterate multitude § VI. Who will 1. By these Principles be best enabled to distinguish their true Superiors from false pretenders § VII As to the Ordination of our Ministers § VIII IX X XI XII As to that of the Non-Conformists § XIII 2. They will hereby be best enabled to judg of the extent of their Duty to their true Superiors themselves § XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII 2. This Hypothesis is peculiarly suited to the practice of such a Society as the Church is for preserving Unity and a due respect to Authority in it especially in times of persecution § XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI 2. The usefulness of this discourse as to its second great design the shewing the real danger and mischievousness of the sin of SCHISM The impossibility of doing this on our Adversaries Principles § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII XXXVIII XXXIX XL XLI On our Principles the Notion given hereof is popular derived from the nature of the sin it self § XLII XLIII And suited to the affections and relish of pious Persons though illiterate § XLIV The great advantage of reasons suited to the affections of the Persons to be persuaded by them § XLV These Principles are more easie to be judged of by popular capacities in three regards § XLVI 1. Most of those disputes which are matters of Learning are here avoided § XLVII 2. The remaining disputes are reduced to such things which even illiterate Persons must be supposed experienced in even in their worldly affairs § XLVIII XLIX 3. The main Principles of this discourse are such as are granted by our Adversaries themselves § L LI LII The great advantages of proceeding on granted Principles § LIII LIV. Particularly in relation to the accommodation of our present disputes § LV. p. 593. ERRATA § I PAge 15. line 12. read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 57. l. 12. r. this it p. 62. l. 7. r. Church for want of such p. 72. l. 27. r. World p. 98. l. 21. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 112. l. 6. r. unloosening penult r. promise p. 114. l. 36. r. also that p. 116. marg r. Tertull. p. 119 penult del of p. 133. l. 21. r. so 136.11 r. aggravable p. 175. l. 1. r. Their design in producing those l. 6. del no. after are add not otherwise l. 7. for this r. the disproof of these p. 182. l. 17. r. be so p. 185. l. 25. for unwilling r. willing p. 187. l. 17. for not r. that p. 193. l. 2. for nay r. so l. 6. externals Whence p. 195. penult r. Prayers p. 199. l. 22. r. but l. 24. r. rigour p. 206. l. 35. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ult 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 220. l. 11. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 l. 28. r. apposite p. 221. l. 4. del it p. 222. l. 15. r. thus p. 223. marg 6. r. vulgatâ p. 229. l. 36. r. crime in p. 237. l. 25. r. pretend
better Information of their present Consciences and I am confident our Brethren themselves are more Ingenuous than to assert the former only for avoiding the latter But besides this agreeableness to the Office of a Peace-maker to engage in Controversies necessary to be abetted for the interest of Peace I might have added farther that it is very suitable to the Office of a Lover of Peace to be favourable to such endeavours which how near it will concern our dissenting Brethren as they would approve themselves Lovers of it themselves will easily understand without any application of mine And how far even a favour to Peace might proceed towards an actual reconciliation notwithstanding Mens other differences in Opinion I have already intimated §. 8 9. § XXXIII AND certainly if the Peace of the Church be concerned in any Controversies it cannot be denyed to be most considerably so concerned in these of Schism Which the rather deserve an exact discussion because as Schism is the great Ecclesiastical Crime of our Age and Countries so the Persons guilty of it have rendred the very Notion of it intricate that they might clear their own Practices from such an Aspersion Nor indeed have these false Notions only found acceptance among such as are at present concerned to clear themselves from its Guilt but have been taken up from several disorderly Practices of some of the first Reformers who were not obliged to Enquire into it by the opposition of their Romish Adversaries who generally in the last Age did not insist on the charge of Schism but Heresie against them Nay have been too much countenanced by several less wary Sons of our own Church who partly being themselves ill Principled in the Right of Church-Authority which they made very deeply if not wholly dependent on the power of the Secular Magistrate and such a Party there has been among us from the beginning of the Reformation to this very day occasioned by the first Disputes concerning the Supremacy in these Kingdomes as it is not ordinary for the generality in such Disputes of Interest and especially where there were so great and intollerable Encroachments on the Secular Power challenged by their Competitors to avoid Extreams on which Principles it was easier to charge Dissenters with Sedition in the State than Schism in the Church And partly being favourable to some Forreigners who were hardly if at all excusable from that Notion of Schism with which our own Non-Conformists have been chargeable And partly finding so much advantage in the Particulars Disputed of to convince Dissenters of the Unreasonableness and Injustice of their Separation on such Pretences without engaging themselves in those less grateful Controversies wherein they were likely to expose themselves to the Odium of the Populacy and Civil Magistracy And partly being unreasonably fearful to give their Romish Adversaries any advantage either against themselves if they defended themselves by such Principles as might reach all the Cases of the several Reformers or against their Friends in the main Cause if they had thus a vowedly disowned their proceedings in the manner of its management These I say seem to have been the real Motives which in all likelyhood prevailed with the more Prudent and Intelligent Controvertists to divert them to another way of managing those Disputes and the Authority of these may have been conceived sufficient for influencing others § XXXIV IT is therefore easie to foresee the Odium to which an Enquiry of this Nature must be obnoxious and the great advantage our Adversaries have of us in the Sentiments of the vulgar Yet the establishing the true Notion of Schism is so extreamly necessary for fixing any solid grounds of Catholick Peace as that I hope our Judicious and Candid Brethren will not only excuse us but conceive themselves obliged in Equity and Conscience to hearken patiently and to Judg favourably especially when they shall find in our way of management nothing offensive to such as are not ready to be offended with Truth itself when it shall declare it self their Adversary For though it cannot be thought incredible here what we Experience so usual in other Instances wherein particular Interests are concerned that Men in reducing their general Notions to Practice are many times swayed and many times misguided into Extravagances unjustifiable by their general Principles and that well-meaning Persons as well as others are obnoxious to the same frailties yet many of our Non-Conforming Brethrens Errors in Practice are so naturally consequent from their Principles as that indeed they cannot be sufficiently prevented without discovering the Errors of the Principles themselves § XXXV THUS as their Doctrine in this Question perfectly overthrows all exercise of Ecclesiastical Government nay plainly supposes that either there is no such thing or that it is perfectly Democratical if indeed that may be called properly so much as Democratical Government it self where there is no obligation to submit acknowledged even in the smaller part when Government is exercised upon them but what arises from their disability to resist so I confess their Notion of Schism and the Duty of a Peace-maker as described by them are exactly fitted to this Hypothesis For supposing the Church as established by Christ not to have been confederated as all Commonwealths are by a Political Subordination of Governours and Governed but only to have been a Multitude of Men no otherwise united among themselves than by the Vnanimity of each particular or at the uttermost only as the Schools of the Philosophers were by a reverential respect and gratitude of Disciples to their Teachers no Man can here be supposed to have any reason to impose his own Judgment on another or if he does he cannot in reason expect that the Person so imposed on should conceive himself obliged to yield to the Imposition or think the others proceedings Just if he should endeavour to force him to it any further than he is satisfied that the other has reason to justifie his proceedings § XXXVI FOR this Vnity being as I said founded on the Vnanimity of the particulars they cannot be obliged further to maintain this Vnity of Amicable Correspondence than as they are on all sides convinced concerning the reasonableness of the Particulars exacted as Conditions of that Correspondence or if any yielding may be thought reasonable in such a State even in particulars which are thought unreasonable yet it can only then be thought obliging when the Particulars are of absolute Necessity for maintaining such an Amicable Correspondence Otherwise where the things themselves are not thought true or yielding them is not thought absolutely Necessary I do not say for humouring the Person but for maintaining an Amicable Correspondence with the whole Multitude though it may be Lawful nay sometimes Noble and Generous to bear even with the humours of particular weaker Persons and much more when they are Numerous yet there being no Jurisdiction on either side there can also be no obligation to yield And
therefore they who deny their Correspondence without submission to Terms unnecessary and humoursome cannot in any reason exact a complyance from Dissenters who believe their Terms to be of that nature and such Dissenters refusing such Terms and consequently such Correspondence which cannot be had without them do no more than what they can justifie which in this Case cannot be pretended concerning the Imposers who are supposed to arrogate a Power not belonging to them without any pretence either of Authority or even of Necessity for maintaining a confident Correspondence and consequently the blame of such a breach cannot be charged on such Dissenters but such Imposers § XXXVII AND as upon this Hypothesis that the Church is only such a Multitude united on no other Terms than the necessity of an Amicable Correspondence betwixt the particulars this must indeed be the true Notion of a Formal and Culpable Schism so it would be very congruous to the Office of a Peace-maker not to perswade the Dissenters to yield but the Imposers to forbear Imposing For seeing in such a Case there can be no other Necessity pretended for submitting to such Impositions in order to the signifying their own desires of maintaining an Amicable Correspondence with their Brethren but either their willingness to be convinced of the Reasonableness of the things exacted from them or their willingness to yield in things necessary for a Correspondence that is which the Exacters think themselves obliged to exact and which they from whom they are Exacted do not Judg more intollerable than the loss of their Correspondence which must not be hoped for but on such Concessions They must as well be guilty of the interruption of this Correspondence who confine it to Conditions which even themselves confess unnecessary to be imposed as they who so undervalue it as to refuse to purchase it by some inconsiderable Submissions even to humoursome Conditions § XXXVIII AND as little as our Brethren are aware that their Discourses of this kind are founded on this Hypothesis of the Churches being no Body Politick especially when themselves are obliged in Interest to urge Authority for the restraint of their own refractory Subjects yet if any do yet doubt of it I shall without Digression only desire them to consider the natural and obvious tendency of those Principles so eagerly maintained among them concerning the Power of the Church's being not a Power of Coercion but only of Perswasion which coordinate private Persons may as well challenge as Governours and concerning the Justice of their defending their Christian Liberty as they call it even in things Indifferent and in opposition to Ecclesiastical Governours which plainly overthrows the Duty of Submission in Subjects which necessarily answers Authority in Governours and the great Disparities which they always pretend when they are urged with any Parallel Instances wherein themselves acknowledg any Coercive Authority betwixt such an Authority and that which they will acknowledg in the Church that I may not now charge them with such Extravagancies of particular Persons as are neither generally owned nor are Fundamental to their Non-Conformity § XXXIX AND from this Irreconcilableness of their Practices in urging the same Authority to their own Subjects which they have denyed to their Governours it comes to pass that they are unable to give any Positive consistent Hypothesis agreeable with it self and exclusive of the pretences of Seditious Persons Though I must withal confess that of all the Non-Conformists the Independents as in other Cases so here seem to me to speak most Consequently to the Principles granted them by the Presbyterians who shewed them the first Precedent of Division in placing the first Seat of Government in the Common People For this gives the most consistent account of the Calling Succession of their Ministers notwithstanding their not being empowered by such Officers as according to the Government established from which they separated were only possessed of the power of Calling in an Ordinary way and will afford the best Apology for their resisting the first Church-Officers whilst they were countenanced by the Communalty to whom they conceive the Officers themselves accountable § XL BUT besides that this Hypothesis is very Precarious and because that though the Communalty had been Originally invested with this power yet the Peaceable Prescription of so many Centuries against them wherein this Power has been exercised by and acknowledged as the Right only of Church-Officers and unanimously submitted to as such by the concerned Communalties themselves which is certainly sufficient to alienate even a Just Title that is by any Humane Means alienable and by the Principles of Government must make it as Schismatical for them forcibly to retrive it without the consent of those whom they found actually possessed of it as it would be Seditious now for any to attempt to restore the old British or Roman Title to England because they were once good and Legal I say besides these Presumptions which lie against this power of the People for legitimating their Vsurpations yet if this were granted to be the Peoples Right there are further very Just Exceptions against their Dissenting Brethrens Proceedings which may make it questionable whether what has been done in favour of them be fit to be reputed as a valid Act of the People themselves For either they must establish some Ordinary Rules of Assembling and Acting by which it may be known what is really transacted by the Communalty and what is only pretended to be so by a few Seditious Dissenters without which no Notion of Government not so much as Democratical is intelligible and upon these Principles either they will I doubt find it more difficult than they seem to be aware of to Justify their first Separation from any Regular Proceedings of the Communalties themselves neither their Assemblies being Legally indicted nor their Suffrages being Legally managed according to the necessary Laws of Democratical Government Or they must allow a liberty of Separation to every one who can perswade so many of the Communalty to joyn with him as may make a distinct Church that is according to them Seaven Persons That is two Parties two Witnesses two Judges and an odd Person that the Suffrages of the Judges may not be even And thus they plainly overthrow all Government so much as Democratical unless over such small Numbers as Seaven and allow every Seditious Person who can Proselite them a Liberty of Subdividing from and in opposition to themselves by the same Precedent as they have done from others § XLI BUT if on the other side the Vnity of the Church be supposed to be that of a Body Politick the true Notion of SCHISM must be this that it dissolves the Church's Vnity in such a sense as this And because this Vnity consists in a due Subordination of Governors and Governed therefore the Notion of Schism consequent hereunto must be this that it is an Interruption of this Subordination And therefore 1.
such a Separation as denies not only Actual Obedience but the Lawful Jurisdiction of Superiors and withdrawes Subjects from the proper Legal Coercions of such a Society especially if continued in the same Districts where Separation from Government is not intelligible without opposition to it must needs be Schismatical For where there are two Governments not Subordinate there must needs be two Bodies Politick and therefore that Separation which interrupts this Subordination and erects an Independent Government must consequently dissolve this Political Vnity and be Schismatical This therefore being the true ground of this Notion of Schism must be the principal thing requisite to be proved against our Adversaries And whether it be proved directly that the Church is such a Body Politick and it be thence inferred that such a Separation as that I have been speaking of is properly Schismatical or whether the Separation be first proved Schismatical and this Political Vnity of the Church be thence deduced both ways of proceeding will come to the same event § XLII ESPECIALLY considering 2. that though indeed we can by Reason prove it very convinient and avaylable for the Salvation of particular Persons that they be thus confederated into Political Societies yet we cannot prove it so necessary as that Antecedently to all Positive Revelation we might have been able to conclude that God must have thus confederated them For besides the great Presumption and Vncertainty of this way of Arguing what God must have done from what we esteem fit and convenient acknowledged by all Equal Persons in Instances whereof they may be presumed Equal Judges that is when this Argument is produced in favour of Adversaries the Argument is then more especially Weak and Imprudent when the conveniences are no greater than still to leave many things to the determination of Humane Prudence and such they are here and when we can have securer ways of Arguing as none will doubt but that it is much more secure to Enquire what God has actually done from actual Revelation than from our own fallible Conjectures what was fit to have been done by him especially in things so Indifferent and Arbitrary as these are concerning which I am at present discoursing If therefore it may appear that God has actually made the Church a Body Politick it will follow that resistance to Ecclesiastical Governors must be actually comdemned by God as Shismatical and on the contrary if it appear that God has actually condemned Resistance to Ecclesiastical Officers as Schismatical it will also follow that he has made the Church a Body Politick there being no other difference betwixt these two ways of Arguing but that one of them is a priori the other a posteriori but in both of them the Connexion is equally certain from its own rational Evidence § XLIII 3. THEREFORE As this actual Constitution of the Church is most proper to be proved from Scripture so the most satisfactory way of proving it thence will be not only to prove thence the Duty of Obedience to be required from Subjects to their Ecclesiastical Superiors but also to discover from thence the mischief likely to befall Subjects upon their Disobedience For 1. it is in vain to constitute a Government or a Body Politick properly so called without a Coercive Power over its particular refractory Members And therefore if in the Constitution of the Church as established in the Scriptures there appeared nothing Coercive over its particular Members to force them to the performance of their Duty under pain of a greater Prejudice to be incurred by them in case of refusal than that of barely acting irrationally and indecorously this very Omission would make it suspicious that the Duty exacted from them were no more than that Reverential respect which we commonly conceive due to Persons of excellent accomplishments or from whom we have received particular Obligations though they have no Right of Jurisdiction over us but not that Obedience which is properly due to Governours of Societies by virtue of their Offices without any regard to their Personal accomplishments and our Obligations to them So that this real Prejudice which is likely to be incurred by the Subject in Case of Disobedience is very necessary to be discovered from the nature of the Constitution of the Church as it is expressed in the Scripture even in order to the clearing the Nature of the Duty and the extent of the obligation of this Authority § XLIV AND 2. the Church being on this Supposal an External Body Politick its Coercive Power must also be External And therefore though the validity of her Censures be derived from Gods seconding them that is from his remitting or binding in Heaven what she remits or binds on Earth yet this power will indeed be very little Coercive if Gods confirmation be thought easily separable from the Churches Act. For seeing that a Society of this nature cannot imply any External Coercion of the External Act all the Coercion she can pretend to can be no other than a Deprivation of those Priviledges which are enjoyed and may be pretended to by virtue of her visible Membership and an exposing the Person so deprived to all the Calamities consequent to such a Deprivation But if the Confirmation of these censures by God be wholly resolved into the merit of the Cause for which they were inflicted they can never be feared nor consequently prove Coercive to their Subjects who are not convinced of the merit of the Cause it self Which in the event will make them never properly Coercive at all especially in regard of a Government which is acknowledged Fallible as the Church is generally by Protestants For it is to be presumed that all who stand out so obstinately against the Churches Authority as to provoke her Censures either are not or pretend not to be satisfied with the Justice of her Decrees and therefore if their own Judgments may be taken as all the Coerciveness of such Censures as these are which are not Externally Coercive must be derived from the Judgments of the Persons lying under them concerning their validity there can be no hopes of reclaiming them by Censures who are not already such as may be presumed satisfied concerning the Justice of the Cause for which they were inflicted and yet such alone are the proper Objects of Coercive Power § XLV BESIDES those Censures which are supposed only Declarative not Operative are not properly the Acts of Authorized but Skillful Persons for it is Skill not Authority that is a Prudent Presumption that any thing is such as it is Declared and therefore the Opinions of Learned Doctors though but private Persons would in this way of Proceeding be much more formidable than the Peremptory Sentences of Ecclesiastical Governours as they are considered only under that Relation I cannot see how this can be denied by those who conceive the Declaration to be purely-Speculative and to be of no further force for obliging particular Persons than as upon
as Persons Authorized to transact with him in the name of their respective Societies and then to oblige them by virtue of their Covenant to employ their Authority for that design for which it was intended by him when he gave it them So that in this regard they are to be considered as concerned on the part of Mankind on which account I have already shewn the necessity of investing them with such an Authority But considering God as a Governour they will be related to him under that Notion as Subordinate Governours to their principal Head and Original of Authority And so they will be concerned not on Mans part of the Covenant but on Gods so that He will be more immediately concerned in the Duty and respect that is paid to them and consequently the principal Duty Covenanted for on our part being a submission to the Divine Authority and a performance of all his Commands Temporary and Prudential as well as of such as are Eternally Obligatory We cannot perform our Covenant with God without being Dutiful to them because they are invested with his Authority As he is accounted a Rebel against his Prince who resists any of his inferior Officers who are Legally empowered and commissioned by him not only in things for which they have his particular express Warrant but also in such as are to be presumed to have been left to their Prudence to Determine by Virtue of their General Commission § III AND it is no inconsiderable use of this Distinction to observe that Ecclesiastical Governours being invested with a Power of Government in both these respects cannot be accountable to their Subjects as our Independent Brethren would have them Indeed this might have been the Case if they had been considered only as our Representatives and God had withal permitted us to our natural Liberty both to appoint them and to allow them what degree of trust we had pleased For then we might as well have allowed them a limitted power as some Democratical Governments in the like manner derived from the consents of their particular Members have confessedly done And then by the Fundamental Rules of Democracy all Persons being Subject to the Multitude in all such instances wherein they had not been particularly empowered and all power being derived from the Multitude it will follow that if they should presume to transgress the limits allowed them they were still Vsurpers and therefore still Subject and accountable for such misdemeanors to those who had empowered them But if we consider the Multitude as prevented even in this their natural Right of choosing and empowering their Representatives as it is most certain that God may prevent them by virtue of his Authority over them Antecedent to any compacts whatsoever and it is credible that he would if he should think a Government independent on the Subjects most likely to promote the designs of such a Government as this is And much more if we consider them as concerned on Gods part of the Covenant So it will plainly appear that they must derive their Authority wholly from God and therefore can have no other bounds than he is pleased to prescribe them and even in Case of their transgressing these they can be accountable for such Transgressions only to God not to the Multitude from whom as no Authority was in this Case derived so none could be reserved from them which might make the Multitude their competent Superiors So that the nature of this manner of conveyance of Government must make the Governours to whom it is conveyed Absolute and unaccountable at least to any humane Judgment At least if the Multitude would challenge any Jurisdiction this way they ought to derive their claim from the same Original by as clear and express donation from God himself as their Governours do which is not that I know of as much as pretended to And it is a very strong Presumption against them that Ecclesiastical Government was never derived from them that indeed they never were in a condition of doing it The Primitive Converts were never united into a Body Antecedently to their admission into Christianity but were admitted by single persons and successively And such could not even by the Rules of Democracy be supposed to have a power of disposing of the Original inherent Rights of the Multitude Besides it is plain that the first propagators of Christianity Christ himself and the Apostles had a Right of forming a Society independent on the consent of its particular Nembers and their admission of all the first Believers into their Society by Baptism does plainly shew that they acted and owned themselves to act by a power that could not have been derived from them But for proving this I may elsewhere have a more convenient occasion § IV TO return therefore to my Subject from which I have hitherto digressed That God as a Governour is concerned to erect the Church into a Body politick and to appoint Subordinate Governours under himself in Order to the seeing his Will performed This will be easy to understand if it be considered 1. That no Society whatsoever is governable only by general and immutable Laws without particular prudential accommodations to present circumstances both of which must be derived from the same Authority and therefore that there must be also in the Church if it be governed by God as well particular Divine Commands for things which are for the good of it in particular Circumstances as for those which are to immutably and eternally § V THAT 2. God does not appear to declare his Will in these particular Circumstances by particular Extraordinary Revelations And therefore as in other Cases wherein a Prince cannot be consulted with in things belonging to his Authority that is to be presumed to be the Princes pleasure which is proposed as such by his Ordinary Officers and Disobedience to such Injunctions of Ordinary Officers is punished as if it had been committed against the Prince himself so God must also be supposed to have provided for such Cases by that general Power which he must therefore give to Ecclesiastical Officers whom we are therefore accordingly to revere as we would approve our Selves obedient to God himself § VI THAT 3. Besides that general Laws cannot reach all particular Circumstances because indeed what is Good in Circumstances is Evil if considered in general and therefore no way fit to be generally imposed I say besides this even in particulars that are reducible to them they are not sufficient for governing any Society without Officers intrusted with a Power of Authentically expounding them so that Subjects may be obliged to stand to their Decisions and of compelling Subjects to submission in their practice For if Subjects be willing to perform their Duty and able to discern it in all particular Cases there would be no need of Authority But if Authority be supposed necessary and that some Subjects will in all likelyhood prove disingenuous as well as mistaken the
really intend that power of Government which he foresaw would follow from this power of the benefits of Ecclesiastical Communion for those on whom he was pleased to confer the power of these benefits And if he did intend any Government at all it must needs have been extremely unpolitick to have intrusted this power into the hands of any but of such whom he designed for Governours For it must have obliged the people to a greater dependence on such Persons than on their Governours themselves which must in case of any difference between them make such Persons too hard for their Governours And that must in the consequence destroy all coercive power over such Persons without which coercive power it is impossible to conceive how any Government can be practicable Which will withal let our Adversaries see how necessary it is that they who have the supreme visible power of these benefits be uncontroulable by any earthly power § VII 5. THEREFORE the power of these benefits of the Society of the Church as it is a Society appears plainly by the Principles of the precedent discourse to be confined to a certain order of men above others who must therefore consequently be understood to be invested with the proper power of governing all others who are by this contrivance of things obliged to depend on them It has appeared that the benefits of the Christian Society as a Society are remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost that the ordinary means of conveying these benefits are the Sacraments that the Sacraments themselves are of no efficacy unless they be validly administred that they are not validly administred unless the Person who administers them be lawfully Authorized to administer them that none can challenge any Authority for this purpose from God but they who have derived it from the Apostles nor any in these days from the Apostles but they who have derived it from them in a continual succession that none can pretend to this succession at least cannot maintein it to future generations out of the Episcopal Communion that a Person living in a particular Jurisdiction cannot expect this benefit of Episcopal Communion from any other Communion but that of the Ordinary of Jurisdiction wherein he lives whilest he lives in it Which will as properly and by the same parity of reason prove that the Ordinary of a particular Jurisdiction is the particular Governour to whom particular Persons are obliged to pay their particular obedience whilest they are within the Jurisdiction as it proves that Bishops are the Governours of the Church in general § VIII AND from hence all the other things necessary in this way for managing the charge of Schism do follow in course especially on the Principles already proved in this Discourse It follows 1. That all our Brethren who live in particular Diocesses are properly subject to the Ordinaries of those Diocesses If the Ordinaries be their Governours it is unavoidable by the Rules of Relation but that our Brethren must as properly be the Subjects of those Ordinaries And 2. That our Brethren must therefore owe their Ordinaries a duty not of reverence only but subjection Reverence may be due from those who are not Subjects But Subjection is the duty which properly regards Subjects as they are Subjects and is therefore as properly due to their Governours as Governours as God himself challenges honour as a Father and Fear as a Master Mal. i. 6 And it is as impossible to own any particular Governours for Governours without paying particular subjection to them as it is impossible to own any particular Person for our Father or Master without paying them the honour or fear which are respectively due to those Relations And 3. That this Subjection which is due to them will require that they should rather yield to their Governours than that they should expect that their Governours should yield to them nay that they are bound in duty to yield in all things that are lawful especially when upon a modest proposal of their reasons to the contrary their Governours profess themselves dissatisfied with those reasons and still require the same things from them as necessary for the publick If the matter of the things required in such a case as this be not sinful the disobedience must needs be so because it is injurious to the rights of Governours And therefore by the Rule of our Brethrens own casuistry they are to chuse it as the safest course rather to hazard the greatest inconveniences to themselves that may follow from the nature of the things required than to hazard the guilt of this sin against God by refusing the duty which he has imposed on them to their Superiors Though I have withal shewn that it were not every sin that would excuse them for the neglect of their duty to Governours but only such a sin as were greater or more evident than the sinfulness of such a neglect and that very few if any sins can be so However 4. Even in those cases wherein their Subjection does not oblige them to active obedience yet it does oblige them at least to passive And it has been shewn that this requires not only that they submit to the punishments inflicted on them by their Superiors but also that they do not joyn with any opposite Society And it has appeared from the sequels of these Principles of Vnity as applied to particular Jurisdictions that all Societies within the Jurisdiction must be opposite who do not own a dependence on the Governours of the Jurisdiction From all which put together it must follow that the separation of which our Adversaries are guilty notoriously is destructive of the Ecclesiastical Government of the respective Jurisdictions wherein they live and consequently Schismatical in respect of those particular Churches as Schism consists in a violation of the Churches Vnity and as the Vnity of those Churches does on these Principles appear to consist in a Vnity of Government § IX BUT our Brethren are not apt to apprehend any great danger in being thus cut off from the Vnity of particular Churches if they may still continue united to the Catholick Church For if this may be their case they may still enjoy all the benefits and comforts of the Christian Religion They may enjoy the benefits For as long as they are Members of the Catholick Church so long they are Members of Christ himself of his Mystical Body and by this means are in as near a capacity to receive all vital influences from him as the Members of the Natural Body are to receive the influences of the natural Life And so long they make up one Legal Person with him and so have a Legal Title to all that he has done and suffered for them on performance of conditions which is all the priviledg that we our selves do challenge on account of our being within the external Communion of the Church They may also enjoy all the comforts of the Christian
in the Vnity of the Catholick Church must not be any other Communion within the Jurisdiction in which he lives and from which he is supposed to be separated As for any other Churches they are also confined within their own Jurisdictions by the common right of Jurisdictions and so confined as that their intermedlings in other Jurisdictions are not only irregularities but meer Nullities and neither their obtruding Officers can oblige others to receive them nor their presuming to censure or absolve without the consent of the power of the Jurisdiction can oblige either Subjects or subordinate Officers to ratifie their censures And much less can any party of the same Church do it within their own Jurisdiction especially against the consent of the Supreme Governours of that Jurisdiction And the reason is plain â—â—cause in the most confined acceptation of a Church there caâ— be no more than one in a Jurisdiction and therefore the multiplying of opposite Assemblies in the same Jurisdiction cannot muâ—â—iply Churches but still that party and that alone must be the Church of the Jurisdiction which has the original right of Authority on their side It is certain by the fundamental constitutions of all Government that neither the acts of Subjects in opposition to their Governours nor of inferior subordinate Governours in opposition to the Supreme visible Governours nor of a smaller over-voted part in opposition to a prevailing number of suffrages are to be taken for the acts of the Society And on account of some or all these defects no act of any of the Conventicles in London can be taken for the act of the Church of London So that still he that only communicates with the Conventicles may notwithstanding that be excluded from the Communion of all particular Churches in the World even that of London it self And therefore this can never in this way of judging secure any Communicant of his being in the Communion of the Catholick Church § XVI BESIDES it has appeared that as they are no acts of Churches so neither are they valid as to the nature of the thing and therefore cannot validly admit a Member even of that particular Church And if they be not valid in reference to that particular Church I leave it to our Brethrens second thoughts to consider how they can be valid in regard of the Catholick Church It suffices at present that this Nullity of such Sacraments hinders them from making their Communicants Members of any particular Church which is sufficient on our present Principles to deprive them of the comfort of their being assured thereby that they are Members of the Catholick Church And yet if what I have said prove true I have directly proved that they who received invalid Sacraments cannot by virtue of such Sacraments expect the Spirit of Christ or to be validly united into his Mystical Body without which our Adversaries themselves will neither think it possible to be united to the Catholick Church nor could they think a Vnion with the Catholick Church desirable on such terms though it had been possible Besides whoever intermeddles to repeal censures within a particular Jurisdiction against the Superiors of that Jurisdiction cannot be presumed to be a competent Judg of such matters though his Judgment should be never so true and the Superiors never so much mistaken yet in all matters of practice not sinful the Superiors Judgment is that wherein the Subject is obliged to acquiesce as to practice And therefore though it were fit that a Person censured by the Governours of a Jurisdiction should be restored yet none but the Governours themselves who have censured him have power to restore him And therefore though such Persons so restoring him should have right on their side as to the reasonableness of the cause why he should be restored yet still these two cases are very different that it is fit he should be restored and that he actually is so And though the Superiors themselves who have power of restoring him do judg it fit that he should be restored yet even their judging it fit that he should be restored does not actually restore him And therefore if the Authority of these Persons fail who presume to restore a Person censured by the Governours of the Jurisdiction against the consent of those Governours that alone is sufficient to invalidate the act of his restitution And if he be not actually restored it plainly follows that a Person so restored is not yet an actual Member of that particular Church and therefore notwithstanding that restitution still continues out of the Communion of all particular Churches and consequently of the Catholick Church in general § XVII AND these same reasons which prove that the acts of usurping Subjects cannot make a Member of that particular Church to which they are related as Members will also prove that their being received into the Communion of other Churches by alike unauthorized Members can never make them Members of those Churches into which they are pretended to be received And therefore if valid Sacraments be only administred in the Episcopal Communion in opposition to all others at least in such places where there are such opposite Communions and it is impossible for any to be made visibly a Member of any Church without a visible participation of its Sacraments then no reception by Persons divided from Episcopal Authority in other places can make them Members of the Churches of those places where they are received If the Conventicles in London have no power to make a Member of the Church of London then though such a censured Person as I am speaking of who should despair of a visible Communion with the Catholick Church in London should remove to York yet he could not better his condition by that removal The Conventicles in York are for the same reason under the same incapacities of making him a Member of the Church of York as they in London were for making him a Member of the Church of London And let him remove never so often yet wher-ever the same reason holds there will still remain the same impossibility of a relief Let him hold correspondence with never so many Conventicles in never so many or distant places all they can do put together cannot make him a Member of one particular Church § XVIII TO which if we add that all those Churches if any there be not Episcopally governed not yet opposed to any Canonical-Episcopacy of the place they live in if notwithstanding they keep an amicable correspondence with the Episcopal Communions and withal keep true to the terms of correspondence they cannot receive to their Communion any who has refused to communicate with those Episcopal Communions with which they mantein correspondence whilest he lived among them and was subject to them As for a surreptitious Communion which may be obteined with forein Churches without knowledg of their condition at home it can be of no more validity before God than their surreptitious bargains
one with another And it is to be remembred that in these matters of Communion the Divine ratification is the only thing considerable This is the true case of our Non-Conforming Brethren And this being supposed to be their case and withal that the things which I have endeavoured to prove in this Discourse are true I do not see how it is possible for them to prove that when they are out of the Communion of the Church of England they are in Communion with any other particular Church in the World that may give them any plausible pretence of continuing in the Communion of the Catholick Church Though other absolute Churches independent on the Church of England might receive them to their Communion who are separated from the Communion of our Church and the Sacraments administred to such Persons were valid Sacraments yet this can afford no comfort to our present Non-Conformists because they cannot plead any countenance from any such Churches And this were sufficient for my present design to prove that they are actually out of the Communion of the visible Catholick Church § XIX BUT because this is a thing which our Independent Brethren do usually profess themselves not to understand how any can communicate with the whole Catholick Church or consequently be excluded from Catholick Communion and because it must be a much more affecting consideration to them to cut them off from all hopes of reâ—â—eâ— on pretence of any claim to a Vnion with the Catholick Church if it may be proved that their separation from their own particular Church must not only de facto cut them off from all communion with other Churches but de jure ought to do so and therefore that all that other Churches can do for them cannot restore them to that Catholick Vnity which they must have lost by their separation from any one particular Church whilest it remains Catholick that is whilest it mainteins the terms of Catholick correspondence Therefore 5. I proceed further to shew that such Separatists cannot maintein their title to Catholick Vnity by being received into any other Churches though otherwise absolute and unaccountable to the Church from whence they are separated By Catholick Vnity I do not here mean as our Independent Brethren do a Vnity of meeting ordinarily in the same Assemblies That I confess unpracticable in the Catholick Church But as the absent Members of particular Churches do not by every particular absence lose the right of Vnion with their particular Churches because as long as they submit to the conditions of Communion they have a right to be received to Communion as often as they shall be pleased to come to it and are accordingly properly said to be united to it and to be in actual Communion with it even when they do not actually communicate with it at all so is the case in reference to Catholick Communion Every Person by his Baptism in any particular Church is admitted a Member of the Catholick Church not of the Elect alone nay not at all according to those who say that they who fall away totally and finally when they are adult could never have been Elect whiles they were Infants but of the visible Church also And that plainly appears hence that all agree that if he have occasion to travel into forein Churches he has a right to be received to the external visible Priviledges of baptized Persons among them only on a certificate of the Baptism received at home without reiterating it in the several Churches where he desires to be admitted to Communion Only the reason of our Brethrens misapprehensions seems to be this that they seem to conceive his right to the particular Church where he is baptized to result from his Vnion with the Catholick Church whereas indeed his right to communion with the whole Catholick Church results rather from that actual visible Communion in which Baptism does visibly invest him with his particular Church as all other Churches are obliged to maintein a correspondence with this particular Church and therefore to ratifie the Sacraments therein administred as validly administred § XX THIS is an observation of very considerable influence upon my present design If Baptism did indeed primarily admit a Person into the Catholick Church and secondarily into the particular Church in which the Baptism was received as a part of the Catholick Church then our Adversaries would reason very consequently They might then very reasonably pretend that the Vnion here made were an invisible Vnion for so that must needs be which can be supposed to be made with the whole Catholick Church antecedently to any visible Vnion with any particular Church Then they might reasonably plead a Vnion with the Catholick Church though out of all visible Vnion with any particular Church because their Vnion with the Catholick Church would be antecedent and therefore Independent on their Vnion with any particular Church Then they might justly question the right of particular Churches to deprive them of their Vnion with the Catholick when they could not think themselves in a worse condition upon their separation from their particular Church than they were in antecedently to their Vnion with it but then they thought themselves united to the Catholick Church They might justly continue their claim of right to Vnion even with that particular Church from which they were separated on the same Principles of their continuing still united to the Catholick Church and the right to Communion even with that particular as well as other Churches being grounded on their persevering Vnion with the Catholick Church And this right to Communion would be as properly an actual Communion with that Church it self as absenters and those who forbear the Sacrament are notwithstanding said to be in actual Communion with it Which if it should prove true it will then be as impossible for particular Churches to deprive any Member so much as of their own Communion as it is impossible to deprive them of their invisible Vnion with the Catholick Church from which this right to Communion with particular Churches is conceived to follow by so necessary a consequence But methinks the destructiveness of these consequences to any Discipline whatsoever should make all Patrons of Discipline wary of the Principles from whence they do so inevitably follow § XXI BUT if on the contrary the right of Catholick Communion be grounded as to particular Persons on the right they enjoy to the Communion of the particular Churches where they live and the right those particular Churches have as parts of the Catholick Church to have their Sacraments acknowledged and their Members received in all other Churches whom they take for Catholick then that which deprives them of the Communion of their own Churches must by consequence deprive them of the right of being Members of the Catholick Church to which they have no other title than what they can derive from their being Members of their own particular Churches to which they are
respectively related And then as it is in the power of the Governours of particular Churches to deprive them at least of the Communion of their own particular Churches and so to cut them off from their being Members of them it must also consequently be in their power to cut them off from their Communion with the Catholick Church to which they have no other title but that Membership This therefore I shall endeavour to prove from the Principles which I intend to make use of for proving this present Particular § XXII IN order hereunto I desire it may be observed 1. That the nature of the inconvenience incurred by this deprivation of Communion in their own particular Churches is such as that it is impossible that the censure can be valid in their own Churches unless it be valid in others The design of the suspending from the Sacraments is for so long to deprive the Person of the benefit of the Sacraments till he yield to the thing required from him by the Authority by which he is suspended Either therefore he has still a title to the benefit of the Sacraments from which he is suspended or he has not If he have still as good a Covenant-title to the benefits of the Sacrament as before and can as well assure himself of his title what loss can it be for him to be deprived of the Sacramental Elements How can it ever oblige him in conscience to submit to that Authority which can inflict no greater punishment than this deprivation If therefore God himself be obliged to ratifie the censures of particular Churches in order to the preservation of their Government then it must follow that the Person so deprived must lose his interest in the New-Covenant of the Gospel and all the priviledges consequent to that interest And he who has lost his interest in the Covenant cannot retrieve it by a bare change of the place and Jurisdiction He that has no interest in the Gospel-Covenant cannot possibly continue a Member of the Catholick Church whose Vnion consists in their confederation in the same Covenant And considering that the Covenant is the same by which they are united to God and to each other nay indeed that their Vnion to each other is grounded on their Vnion with Christ they are therefore Fellow-Members of each other Eph. iv 25 1 Cor. v◠17 because they are all Members of the same Mystical Body of Christ they are made one Spirit by partaking of that one Spirit which is also his therefore it is impossible that they can be separated from this Mystical Vnion with one another unless they be both or one of them at least disunited from Christ which they who are must by necessary consequence be disunited from all the Members of that Mystical Body And however that Vnion with other Members could afford little comfort to a Person concerned in it which were consistent with their separation from Christ their common Head So also they who are deprived of the title the Covenant is capable of giving them to remission of sins in one Church cannot at the same time be judged to be free from their sins in the other even on performance of the Moral Duties and he who is not so cannot be judged to be in a present capacity of being a Church-Member This proves at least that the Church which thinks the censure pronounced against any Person to have been pronounced validly and to have cut him off from the Church wherein he was censured cannot at the same time think him united to themselves in the bond of Catholick Vnity if they think the Church from whence he is divided to be Catholick And the case is the same whether the Person so divided have divided himself by separation or have been divided from them by the censures of a Lawful Authority Still so long as he is divided from any one Church that is Catholick he cannot continue his Vnity with them if they continue theirs with the Church from which he is divided § XXIII HENCE it follows 2. That if such a Person be received to the Sacraments in another Church without as good an Authority for uniting him to the Vnity of the Catholick Church as that was by which he was deprived only on supposition of the continuance of his invisible Vnity with the Catholick Church notwithstanding his visible separation from a part of it such Sacraments must as to him be perfect Nullities and cannot convey to him the proper benefits of Sacraments even on the performance of the general Moral conditions of Faith and Repentance For the Sacraments cannot convey the merits and influences of Christ to any but those who are united in his Mystical Body by the same proportion of reasoning as the Vessels by which the vital influences are conveyed in the Natural Body can convey them to none but those who are parts of the Body to which they are supposed to belong The strength of this Mystical reasoning I have elsewhere proved Seeing therefore that the Sacraments can convey no influences but unto them who are united to Christ and on the supposition I am now speaking of the Persons thus received to the Sacrament cannot be supposed thus united to him therefore such a Communicant could not expect any benefit from such Sacraments not only in regard of his want of those moral dispositions but also in regard of his incapacity though he had them This therefore will be the case where the reception to Communion is only granted as a Testimony of the Vnity which the Person so received is supposed to have invisibly even antecedently to such reception But if it be designed further not to testifie that Catholick Vnity which he is supposed to retain but to restore it to him who is supposed to have lost it by his separation from his own Church this is another case And concerning it I say § XXIV 3. THAT no particular Church whatsoever can by its Authority alone restore any to Catholick Vnity who has been separated from it by another without the consent of the Church by which he was at first separated This is plain from what has been said before because this is impossible to be done without disanulling the Authority by which he was at first separated from the Church For if this later Church can restore such a Person to Catholick Vnity then it may also restore him to Vnity with that Church by which he was at first separated And if so then he may have a right to the Communion even of his own Church even whilest he is actually separated from them And then what effect can such an Authority have whereby it may appear to be Authority if it cannot deprive him of so much as the right to that Communion from which he is so separated Seeing therefore both these exercises of Authority cannot be supposed valid at the same time and seeing therefore that God is obliged to disanul the one if he will ratifie the
other it will not be difficult to determine which of the two must prove invalid The Church which endeavours to restore such a Person is supposed to be only equal with the Church which has rejected him and therefore can have no Authority to reverse her censures And therefore as God is not obliged to ratifie that act of hers in regard of her Authority so he is obliged to disanul it as he is the common Governour of all the Churches and as he is thereupon obliged to maintein Discipline and that correspondence between the Churches which is so necessary for the preservation of Discipline § XXV HENCE it follows 4. That all that can be done by other Churches receiving a Person separated from the Communion of his own Church can only be to judg of his case not so as to oblige the Church to which he belongs originally to stand to their judgment but only so far as concerns their own Jurisdiction They can judg whether they be in conscience or for the maintenance of their common correspondence obliged to ratifie their censures within their own respective Jurisdictions that is they can judg concerning the validity of the censures whether they be grounded on a cause properly belonging to the Authority by which they were censured and whether they have reason therefore to presume them valid before God that is indeed whether they do really cut him off from Catholick Vnity And in case they find the sentence pronounced against him in his own Church invalid in it self they may then receive him to their own Communion yet so as that they do not pretend any Authority to reverse the sentence pronounced against him in his own Church but only to declare the original invalidity and that only with relation to their own obligation to confirm it within their own Jurisdictions nor pretend to restore him to the Catholick Vnity which he had lost by the censures which had been passed upon him in his own Church but only receive him as an acknowledgment of his uninterrupted right to Catholick Communion and of their own obligation as parts of the Catholick Church to admit him to their own Communion This certainly they may do by their own Authority without any the least encroachment on the Authority which had originally passed the censure not as superior to that Authority but only as not subject to it § XXVI AND this seems actually to have been the case of the Western Church in the cause of Athanasius Whilest he was charged only with Canonical matters they were willing to hear what might be said against him and in the mean time to suspend him from their own Communion But when they found partly by the notorious conviction of the disingenuity of the accusations of this kind as in the charges of the suborned whore and the cutting off the hand of Arsenius and prophaning the sacred offices at Mareotis and partly by their delays and evasions of this kind of tryal that this was not the thing indeed insisted on how much soever it was pretended but that it was rather an artifice made use of for the subversion of the common faith professed by him they must then look on such censures as passed upon him rather for his Faith than for the Ecclesiastical crimes which were pretended Wherein if they judged right the censures must have been essentially invalid on two accounts both as to the cause for which they were inflicted and as to the Persons by whom As to the cause for which they were inflicted For they could not believe that God would deprive him of Catholick Vnity only for mainteining the Catholick Faith which was one of the principal foundations of that Vnity And as to the Persons by whom they were inflicted who being Hereticks were uncapable of being Bishops and consequently of any Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction besides that they were not obliged to maintein any correspondence with Hereticks and therefore could not be confined to Canons in dealing with them the Canons being only terms of correspondence Though in the case wherein our Adversaries are concerned there is much more reason for the confinement of this power of other Churches For the power is much more absolute which particular Churches may challenge over their particular Subjects than that which Provincial or National Synods can pretend to over particular Churches And therefore the obligation to confirm their censures must be proportionably greater on account of the common correspondence § XXVII NOW if this be so then it will plainly follow that the Governours of particular Churches do as often deprive of Catholick Vnity as they deprive any really of the Communion of their own Churches and that all that other Churches can do cannot really unite any to the Catholick Church who has been separated from any particular Church by a just Authority without the consent of that Authority by which he was separated and that if their receiving such a Person to their Communion do him any good it must be only in such cases wherein he was really never deprived of a right to Communion even with that Church whose actual Communion has been denied him The only thing remaining further for settling the Discipline of the Church on a solid foundation can only be to see in what cases the censures may be presumed valid and wherein it may therefore be known that the restitution is invalid and unsafe to be trusted and whether any relief may be expected thence by Persons in our Brethrens circumstances If either by any censure of their Superiors or by their own resistance and separation from them they be really separated from their own Churches to which they were originally related they must consequently be separated from the Vnity of the Catholick Church nor can they be restored to it but by being reunited to their own particular Churches and that by a reconciliation as visible as their separation And for clearing this that their separation must needs be a real separation even in the esteem of God himself I desire it may be considered § XXVIII 5. THAT whatever is necessary for the design of Gods establishment that he must by his design be obliged to ratifie whether he has expresly said he will do so or no. Nay indeed there can be no necessity that he should expresly warn them of it who are already sufficiently convinced that this is agreeable to his design For it is certain that God cannot design an end without the means nor be ignorant of what is requisite to his design as a means nor fail where the means belong to his part of the Covenant to see them performed as I have already shewn that it is his part to perform the benefits of the Sacraments None but he can immediately give the Spirit and apply the forgiveness of sins which are there promised But yet he is obliged to do so when the Persons Authorized by him do it in his name and with reference only to that end for which he has
this Obligation is such as will make them who rather than they will submit to such conditions either separate themselves or suffer themselves to be excluded from Communion by such Governours for such a refusal of submission guilty of the sin of SCHISM Here are two Parts I. That all are obliged to submit to all unsinful conditions of the Episcopal Communion where they live α if imposed by the Ecclesiastical Government thereof This proved by these two Degrees 1. That the supposition of their being less secure of Salvation out of this Episcopal Communion than in it is sufficient to prove them obliged to submit to all terms not directly sinful however unexpedient rather than separate themselves or suffer themselves to be excluded from this Communion Ch. I. § 7 8 9 10. 2. That there is indeed less security of salvation to be had even on performance of the moral conditions of Salvation out of this Episcopal Communion than in it This proved from two things 1. That they cannot be so well assured of their salvation in the use of extraordinary as of ordinary means nay that they being left to extraordinaries is a condition either very hazardous or at least very uncomfortable at present whatever it may prove hereafter Ch. II. 2. That these ordinary means of Salvation are in respect of every particular Person confined to the Episcopal Communion of the place he lives in as long as he lives in it This proved from two things I. That these ordinary means of Salvation are confined to the external Communion of the visible Church This proved from four things 1. We cannot be assured that God will do for us what is necessary for our Salvation on his part otherwise than by his express Promises that he will do it Ch. III. § 1 2. 2. The ordinary means how we may assure our selves of our interest in his Promises is by our interest in his Covenant by which they are conveyed to us Ch. III. from § 5. to the end 3. The only ordinary means by which we may assure our selves of our interest in this Covenant with him is by our partaking in these external Solemnities by which this Covenant is transacted and mainteined Ch. VI V VI VII 4. The participation in these external Solemnities with any Legal Validity is only to be had in the external Communion of the visible Church Ch. VIII II. That this visible Church to whose external Communion these ordinary means of Salvation are confined is no other than the Episcopal Communion of the place where any one lives whilest he lives there This proved in both parts 1. That the visible Church to whose external Communion these ordinary means of salvation are confined is the Episcopal Communion This proved by these Degrees I. That Salvation is not ordinarily to be expected without an external participation of the Sacraments 1. Negatively Not by those other popular means which ordinary Persons are apt to trust in to the neglect of the Sacraments that is 1. Not by hearing the Word Preached Ch. IX 2. Not by private Prayer nor indâ—ed by any out of the Communion of the Church Ch. X. XI XII XIII XIV 2. Positively That Salvation is ordinarily to be expected only by this external participation of the Sacraments 1. Proved concerning Baptism Ch. XV. 2. Concerning the Lords Supper Ch. XVI XVII II. That the validity of the Sacraments depends on the Authority of the persons by whom they are administred Ch. XVIII III. No other Ministers have the Authority of administring the Sacraments but only they who receive their Orders in the Episcopal Communion This proved by four Degrees 1. That the Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God Ch. XIX 2. That though it be derived from God yet it is not so derived without the mediation of those men to whom it was at first committed Ch. XX. 3. That it cannot be so derived from those men to whom it was at first committed without a continued succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them from those first times of the Apostles to ours at present Ch. XXI 4. That this Authority is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion Ch. XXII XXIII XXIV XXV 2. That the Episcopal Communion to which every particular Person is obliged to joyn himself as he would enjoy the ordinary means of his own particular salvation is the Episcopal Communion of the place wherein he lives whilest he lives in it Ch. XXVI II. That the nature of this Obligation to unsinful conditions of their Episcopal Communion is such as will make them guilty of the sin of SCHISM β who rather than they will submit to such conditions either separate themselves or suffer themselves to be excluded from Communion by their respective Diocesan Ordinaries Ch. XXVII INTRODUCTION THE CONTENTS The concurrent sence of all Irreligious as well as Religious concerning the present necessity of our Ecclesiastical peace and the great mischief of our Ecclesiastical Divisions § 1. The management of Religious Controversies with a design of peace will best answer the qualifications of an useful Controvertist § 2. It is most agreeable with the most prudent Rules of managing Controversies either for finding the truth it self or where humane frailty might fail of that for making the error innocent and excusable § 3 4 5 6 7. What influence this design of peace would have particularly in those Controversies which are debated between us and our Non-Conforming Brethren How far the unpeaceableness of a Position of this kind may be urged as an Argument of its falshood and on the contrary § 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29. That our present undertaking is not unsuitable to the Office of a peace-maker § 30 31 32. How much the peace of the Church is concerned in this Controversie concerning SCHISM How differently the Notion of SCHISM must be stated by them who make the Church a Body Politick and by them who make it not so Our Adversaries Notions of SCHISM and of the duty of a peace-maker exactly fitted to the supposition of the Churches being no Body Politick and indeed very rational on that supposition What is to be thought of the Independent â—enet of placing all Ecclesiastical Authority originally in the people and how far that will clear their practices from the charge of SCHISM § 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40. How the Notion of SCHISM must be stated on supposition of the Church's being a Body Politick § 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51. An account of the Division of this Work into the Rational and Historical parts Some intimations concerning the usefulness and design of the Historical § 52. page 1. CHAP. I. 1. That for proving our Obligation to enter into the Communion of the visible Church it is not requisite to prove that we must otherwise be
p. 239. l. 8. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 35. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 240. l. 23. r. that as p. 241. l. 30. r. also separated p. 245. l. 35. r. therefore as p. 247. del marginem and add ad not a p. 248. p. 248. l. 6. r. excuse marg 20. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 249. l. 16. r. to them p. 250. marg 10. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 11. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 254. l. 15. r. there p. 256. l. 14. del that p. 259. l. 21. r. severity p. 261. marg 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 262. marg 17. r. Poliorcetes p. 263. marg Psal. L. p. 276. l. 15 r. Xeno 279.32 ingenuously p. 281. l. 1. r. guilt p. 291. l. 34. r. extremely p. 295. l 14. r. then l. 35. r. sin p. 297. l. 33. r. far p. 307. l. 17. r. faxit p. 308. l. 29. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 l. 35. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ib. r. breath p. 309. l. 17. r. of purer l. 24. r. wink p. 310. l. 21. r. which l. 26. r. Soul p. 311. l. 18. r. and. l. 23. r. Poets is l. 26. r. is yet p. 313. l. 4. del if we deal ill with p. 35. l. 5. r. think strange l. 31. r. which p. 319. l. 4. r. on l. 9. r. be yet p. 323. l. 29. r. proving Without p. 326. r. Spirit only p. 336. marg 11. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 337. r. the return of Souls p. 342. l. 23. r. are not p. 361. l. 19. r. for l. 27. r. consider we p. 362. l. 21. r. then p. 363. l. 4. r. need a. p. 369. l. 16. r. propagation l. 17. r. invention p. 373. l. 5. r. intention l. 35. r. the. p. 376. l. 19. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 l. 31. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 377. marg 11. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 378. marg 14. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 380. l. 38. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 394. l. 6. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 marg 4. r. Numenio p. 396. l. 10. r. knew l. 30. r. a Mystery p. 397. l. 22. r. were p. 403. l. 9. r. new p. 425. l. 17. r. pleases Whatever p. 442. penult r. Texts p. 443. l. 34. r. there p. 447. l. 21. del his l. 22. del to p. 450. l. 25. r. the Spirit p. 461. l. 25. r. prosecution p. 463. l. 25. r. Power p. 478. l. 18. r. former p. 482. l. 1. r. loss p. 495. l. 10 r. favourable p. 498. marg l. 8. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 546. 11. r. it p. 550. l. 22. del not p. 597. l. 22. r. the. p. 604. l. 1. r. lot p. 614. l. 31. del not p. 619. l. 17. r. anothers THE INTRODUCTION THE CONTENTS The concurrent sense of all Irreligious as well as Religious concerning the present necessity of our Ecclesiastical Peace and the great mischief of our Ecclesiastical Divisions § 1. The management of Religious Controversies with a design of Peace will best answer the Qualifications of an useful Controvertist § 2. It is most agreeable with the most prudent Rules of managing Controversies either for finding the Truth it self or where humane frailty might fail of that for making the Errour Innocent and Excusable § 3 4 5 6 7. What influence this design of Peace would have particularly in those Controversies which are debated between Vs and our Non-Conforming Brethren How far the Unpeaceableness of a Position of this kind may be urged as an Argument of its Falshood and on the Contrary § 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29. That our present undertaking is not unsuitable to the Office of a Peace-maker § 30 31 32. How much the Peace of the Church is concerned in this Controversie concerning SCHISM How differently the Notion of SCHISM must be stated by them who make the Church a Body Politick and by them who make it not so Our Adversaries Notions of SCHISM and of the Duty of a Peace-maker Exactly fitted to the Supposition of the Church's being no Body Politick and indeed very Rational upon that Supposition What is to be thought of the Independent Tenet of placing all Ecclesiastical Authority Originally in the People and how far that will clear their Practices from the charge of SCHISM § 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40. How the Notion of SCHISM must be stated on Supposition of the Church's being a Body Politick § 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51. An account of the Division of this work into the Rational and Historical Parts Some intimations concerning the usefulness and design of the Historical § 52. THE Peace of the Church is a thing at present so extremely desirable not only in regard of its intrinsick Charitableness but it s many happy influences on our dearest Interests not only Sacred but Secular that he must be as Imprudent as Impious as Inhumane as Vnconscientious as little deserving the name of a Friend of his Country as of a Lover of his Religion who can still be unconcerned for a design I do not say of such worth but of such importance for our settlement For though there are few so Prudent as to foresee Inconveniences at a distance or of so tender sense as to be vehemently concerned for Absurdities in Reasoning or of so Spiritual an apprehension as to be moved by the purely Spiritual Threats or Rewards of the Gospel yet every one is apt to be affected by his own Experiences And accordingly we find not only the Practicers but the very Enemies of Religion to be now more than ordinarily inclinable to a Reconciliation Not only such who are endued with that Modesty which would hinder Men from Imperious Dogmatizing or easie Censuring of Dissenters or that ardent Charity for their Brethren of the same Profession which would hinder them from either giving or taking any Offence which were by any Lawful means avoidable or that Humility which would incline unskilful Persons to submit to the Judgment of Persons more skilful at least in such matters wherein they might be convinced of their own Unskilfulness and would make them diffident if not in their Judgment yet at least in their Practice when contrary to the sense of the more Judicious which would very much conduce to secure the Church from disturbing Innovations or that Pious Prudence which would make Men especially cautious of Errors either in Opinions or Practices which would prove extraordinarily mischievous if Erroneous as those must do which are destructive of the Government of that Society to which the Erroneous Persons are related and yet more especially Cautious in such Cases wherein their past Experiences might be sufficient warnings against future Inconveniences as they may here where Men may find how little available
demeanor which may sweeten the temper of the Erroneous Person and dispose him to receive Conviction which are absolutely necessary to recommend his Endeavours for the direction of the Judicious or the Authoritative Guidance of the Multitude are not only very reconcilable with but very naturally consequent to the temper of a Pious and Peaceable Person § IV BUT this way of managing Controversies with a design of Peace is not only fitted to the Qualifications of an useful Controvertist but the most Prudent Rules of managing that Employment For the true design of an useful Controvertist being the discovery of such Truths wherein Mankind is concerned for their Practice those means must be most Prudent for this purpose which may either secure us of finding the Truth it self where it is capable of being found or make the Ignorance excusable and the Practice secure where it cannot And for both these purposes this design of Peace in our Religious Disputes does best fit us especially in such as these concerning Government for which we are at present concerned § V OVR Enquiring with a design of Peace does best fit us for the discovery of Truth it self I do not now mean only as it provokes our Industry in our search and makes us Candid both in judging and in acknowledging the success of our own Convictions but also as the Peaceableness of a Proposition of this nature may be made an Argument of its Truth it self For considering that the Catholick Peace of the Christian Churches within themselves and with each other is an End not only worthy of the Divine Providence but actually designed by him and considering that it is not agreeable to the Divine Prudence that he should have designed an End without Means or with Means repugnant to it and particularly in our Case that he should design an End to be procured by the Church as certainly in all Bodies Politick whatsoever is necessary for the preservation of its publick Peace is inseparably and peculiarly the Province of its Governours without Means in the power of the Church for procuring it or with Institutions directly contrary and considering withal that God in dealing with the Church has not considered her Abstractly but as she is at present in this Life under all her frailties and disadvantageous Circumstances We may therefore argue both Positively that whatever is necessary for preserving this Peace of the Church in this Life as consisting of Persons though well-meaning yet generally frail and obnoxious both to mistakes and Prejudices that has certainly been provided for by God and Negatively that what is necessarily destructive of that Peace I mean with a Moral Necessity considering the frailties of the generality even of well-meaning Persons that is certainly contrary to the true design of God So that though we had no other Argument against our Adversaries Principles and Practices but this that Catholick Peace is by them rendred unpracticable and Morally impossible at least in this Life and that by ours alone it is capable of being maintained this alone were sufficient to prove as well their Falshood as their Inexpediency and mischievousness and as well to prove the Truth of our own Principles and Practices as the convenience of them on Politick Considerations I am aware what ill Arguments some Men have deduced from this Topick whilst they argue what God must have done or not have done independently on Revelation But then I consider also that their mistakes are not deduced from this Proposition in the general and indefinite way wherein I have expressed it but from their particular Applications whilst they gratuitously presume either that an End was intended by God which was not or that some Means was conducive or necessary for it which has proved otherwise on a particular Examination And I confess that before this can be applyed to our Dissenting Brethrens Case it will need several other more particular improvements But though this Principle or its Application were indeed as fallible as they are concerned to believe it to be yet I add farther § VI THAT it will at least even in that Case secure the Practice Innocent and render the Error Excusable In Reason and Conscience as well as in Policy we are obliged to be more wary where our mistakes are like to prove of dangerous Consequence and where the mischief will be very great there the necessity of the thing and our Conviction of it must be proportionable that may secure our Practice For besides that no Error of our Judgment is ever likely to be imputed to us to our Prejudice but that which is joyned with some ill disposition of our Will and that it is certainly no such ill disposition of our Will to prefer a Duty of greater before another of lesser consequence and to prejudg in favour of it where there does not appear such evident conviction to the contray as may make amends for the danger of venturing on it for in matters of Practice the dangerousnes as well as the Falshood of an Assertion is very Justly and Conscientiously considerable especially when the danger is of offending God and ruining our own Souls and besides that no Prudent and Good Legislators could think it convenient for the Publick that their greatest and most important commands should be neglected as often as there might appear some little probable Evidence for some lesser Duty that were inconsistent with them and that they must therefore be better pleased with him who in such a Case should stick to the greater Duty and neglect the less than with him who should extremely prejudice the Publick by a too scrupulous adherence to his own Convictions and must judg it reasonable to be better pleased with him though in the Event he should prove mistaken not only in regard of his good meaning and the pitiableness of his condition but also in regard of the real usefulness of such a Presumption for the Publick in such a Case wherein it were managed with Sincerity and Candor and it can certainly be no dishonour to Presume him pleased with that which we have reason to believe would please a Good and Just humane Legislator in regard of its reasonableness and good influence on the Publick for which he were concerned and besides that this is a certain Rule in all Positive Commands where the omission is not intrinsecally evil that all such things cease to be so much as Duties when they prove inconsistent with others of greater consequence to the Publick nay and that this is a Rule approved by God himself in the practice of his own Commands as is professedly proved by our Saviour himself Mat. XII 7 in that of the Sabbath which is an Observation which I believe might prove very useful to facilitate our Dissenting Brethrens complyance if they would be pleased to consider it I say besides all these Considerations the very want of such an Evidence for smaller Duties as may make amends for their consequential Prejudice to
Solemnities is the only Ordinary Means whereby we may be particularly assured of our Interest in the Covenant But that I may more distinctly shew not only that in reason this is fit to have been thus contrived but also that it has been actually Observed in the Evangelical Covenant and that I may bring the application more home to our particular Case I therefore proceed to § III THE 2. Particular proposed That at least these Ordinary Means of our Salvation at least those whereby we may be satisfied of it and receive any comfort from it that is as has appeared from the things now premised Gods Promises as conveyed to us by a Covenant and this Covenant as Legally applyed to particular Persons by Persons sufficiently Authorized by God for that purpose to act in his name and to engage him with a Legal valid obligation to performance are indeed confined to the external Communion of the Visible Church And that the Episcopal Church under whose Jurisdiction any one lives is that Visible Church out of which these Ordinary Means of Salvation are not to be had by any whilest he lives under that Jurisdiction This consists of two Parts 1. That these Ordinary Means of Salvation are confined to the External Communion of the Visible Church And 2. That in reference to the Duty of particular Persons that Visible Church wherein they may expect to find these Ordinary Means is the Episcopal in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed § IV 1. THESE Ordinary Means of Salvation are confined to the External Communion of the Visible Church I say the External Communion that I may prevent those Exceptions which many are ready to make in behalf of our dissenting Brethren that they do already Communicate with Us in 36. of the 39. Articles which they believe as well as We and that they heartily wish well to all good Men of what Party soever and that at least they Pray for Vs where they cannot Pray with Vs For these if they could in any propriety of Speech be stiled Acts of Communion which no good Christian can deny even to real Schismaticks themselves with whom notwithstanding all who hold that there is such a thing as real Schism must not hold it lawful to communicate yet most certainly they are not Acts of External Communion By this therefore I only mean a participation in those External Exercises whereby the Church subsists as a distinct Society that is a joining in the Ordinances administred in it but especially in the Sacraments I say the Visible Church purposely to obviate that pretence of the Church's consisting only of the Elect who as they are supposed themselves not Visible nor united among themselves by any Visible commerce so they think and very consequently to this Notion that Communion may be maintained with them in an Invisible way by likeness of design and Sympathy of Affection◠And therefore by this Visible Church I mean that Visible Society which is maintained by an acknowledgment of the same common Visible Ecclesiastical Government and by an external participation of the same common Sacraments So that my meaning in this whole Proposition is That a Legal Right to these Evangelical Promises and Covenant which are the Ordinary Means whereby we may be assured of our Salvation on performance of Conditions is not conveyed to Vs otherwise than by our participation of these external Ordinances whereby we profess our Selves Members of such a Visible Society which is maintained by those Ordinances of which none can be partakers without consent of the Visible Ecclesiastical Governours which must therefore oblige all to a Subjection to those Governours This will be clear in discoursing concerning these particulars 1. That the only Ordinary Means whereby we may assure our Selves that we in particular have an interest in his Promises of any of the things now mentioned as necessary for our Salvation is by our assurance of our being engaged in Covenant with him 2. That the only Ordinary Means whereby we may assure our Selves of our Interest in this Covenant with him is by our partaking of these external Solemnities whereby this Covenant is transacted and maintained and 3. That the partaking of these external Solemnities with any Legal validity which can only be a ground of comfort to a Person concerned in this Case is only to be had in the external Communion of the Visible Church § V 1. THEREFORE the only Ordinary Means whereby we may assure our Selves that we in particular have any Interest in these Divine Promises without which assurance it has appeared to be in vain for particular Persons to challenge any comfort is by assuring our Selves that we in particular are in Covenant with him so that at least the Negative way of Arguing for which alone I am at present concerned will hold here That he who cannot assure himself that he is in Covenant with God can also never in an ordinary way at least assure himself that he in particular has an Interest in the Divine Promises For proving this I desire it may be Observed 1. That it is only the Obligatory force either of the Divine Promise or Covenant that can be a solid ground I do not say of comfort in general but at least of any positive Assurance and consequently at least of that degree of comfort which requires positive Assurance This appears from what has been already discoursed under the former Head 2. Therefore it is to be Observed further that Promises and Covenants are Legal transactions and that God himself herein condescends to the capacities of his Creatures so that they may be capable of judging him obliged to them by the same Legal rational measures whereby they are capable of entring into Obligations to one another That it was Gods design that his Creatures should understand him as thus obliged is very easie to be understood from his using expressions plainly significative of a Legal conveyance with all its Circumstances according to the Customes of those Nations Thus the name of a Covenant of a Mediator of a Testament of a Surety of Sealing of giving an earnest and First fruits c. are plain terms of Law and allusions to the Customes of Legal conveyances in those times and therefore were so most obviously intelligible by those Persons who were concerned in them immediately and to whose capacities they were immediately fitted of a Legal Obligation and consequently were in all likelihood designed by God himself so to signifie Unless we can suppose that he designedly made use of Expressions which by all Regular and Prudent measures of Interpretation were likely to be misunderstood by his Creatures concerned in them which it not reconcilable with his Goodness and Veracity Besides this appears from his doing this in Writings of a Popular stile and particularly fitted to the vulgar capacities who were certainly like to understand him thus where they found their own familiar Expressions used and their Terms alluded to nay from the
any other ordinary signs not only as most generous and most agreeable with the true design of Christianity but as more really solid and comfortable to the Persons concerned in it But I must not digress further from my present design to shew how it comes to be so All that I am now concerned for in it is only to observe how great an influence the actual performance of the Duties of Christianity have on the good of that Society wherein they are performed when by this means the Members must be so mutually endeared and so strongly inclined to the mutual performance of all good Offices and therefore how very worthy it is of the care of all good Governours but especially of God as the Governour of that Society for which it is more immediately and principally designed and withal how very heinous in Gods sight the Sin of Schism must prove consequently to these Supposals and how very destructive to the comfort of the Persons engaged in it when it is so extremly prejudicial to the Publick CHAP. VI. The same thing further Prosecuted THE CONTENTS § I Both the Ends now mentioned concerning God as a Governour are more likely to be atteined by admitting us to the Benefits of the Covenant by the External Solemnities of it than otherwise § I. 1. That of confederating Us into a Body Politick A short account of the usefullness of the whole Hypothesis promoted in this Discourse for this purpose § II. III.IV.V.VI.VII.VIII.IX.X.XI.XII.XIII.XIV.XV.XVI.XVII.XVIII.XIX.XX.XXI.XXII.XXIII.XXIV.XXV 2. That of securing our performance of Duty § XXVI XXVII.XXVIII.XXIX.XXX.XXXI.XXXII.XXXIII 2. THEREFORE I proceed to prove that both these Ends of confederating us into a Body Politick and of obliging us to the performance of the Duties required on our part are more likely to be atteined by admitting us to the Benefits of the Covenant only by the External Solemnities of it as the Ordinary Means rather than by admitting us to them immediately by our own Resolutions or Promises Both these I shall consider distinctly § II 1. THEN This admitting of us to the Benefits of the Evangelical Covenant only by the external Solemnities of it as the Ordinary Means is very useful for confederating us into a Body Politick and for obliging us to submit to such Governours as those of the Church who may be supposed obnoxious to frequent Persecutions of the Secular Power and then to be left destitute of any thing but their own Sacredness which may aw their refractory Subjects to Obedience For according to the Principles which I have partly proved already and shall partly have occasion to prove further in prosecution of my designed Method I suppose 1. That no Prudent Person can ever be willing to venture his Soul on a less secure way that can obtein a more secure one by any condescensions of less concernment than the thing he ventures As though it be very possible to escape Shipwrack by a plank yet no wise man will ever venture it that may have a Ship by concessions of less concernment to him than the hazard of his Life by such a venture The very fear and probability of his miscarriage in such a Case would be thought sufficient to Oblige him to yield to Conditions otherwise very intolerable if yet they might be less hurtful to him than his present Fears in such a Condition § III AND 2. That the Fear of his Souls miscarriage would be really judged more hurtful by a Prudent Person than any condescension whatsoever how grievous soever if it were not directly sinful Because at least to him his own Soul is his dearest interest and nothing can prejudice that but Sin § IV AND 3. He that wants the Ordinary Means of Salvation and is only to trust to Extraordinaries will have reason to judg himself to be in as great and probable hazard of his Soul as he who in a storm were cast out of a Ship and had nothing given him to favour him in his escape but a plank were of his Body And such a Person were therefore obliged to yield to all conditions not sinful because nothing but Sin could make his condition more desperate or less comfortable to him than that wherein he is thus supposed to be already engaged as in the Parallel condition nothing but Death or that which were worse could make that Persons condition more disconsolate than it is who in a Shipwrack could have nothing but a plank to trust to § V THAT 4. In regard of the Soul the only Ordinary Means of its Salvation is its interest in the Divine Promises at least this is the only Ordinary Means of our Assurance of it § VI THAT 5. The only way of procuring an interest in them is by procuring an interest in the Covenant by which alone it comes to pass that God is Obliged to the performance of them § VII THAT 6. The only Ordinary Means of procuring an interest in this Covenant is by admission to the External Solemnities by which it is ratified and confirmed § VIII THAT 7. These External Solemnities are the two Sacraments And therefore that it will hence follow that all unsinful Conditions however inconvenient are rather to be submitted to than that we should suffer our Selves to be deprived of the use of them And that therefore they and only they who only have the power of administring them and of admitting us to them must by this very contrivance of things be necessarily understood to have a power to impose on us what Constitutions they please that are not sinful And though it be very possible for other Governours who may not be aware of Consequences to give away a greater power to their Inferior Officers by the words of their Commission or by some other subtle Consequence from the nature of the Power intrusted to them than they intended yet this cannot be understood of God who is Omniscient And therefore whatsoever Consequence does follow from the nature of the Government intrusted by him may therefore be concluded to have been by him designed for the Governours so intrusted § IX 8. THEREFORE the administration of these Sacraments and consequently the admission of particular Persons to them is not common to all Christians but only confined to some Persons Authorized for that purpose by God so that if the administration of the External Symbols were attempted by any other such an attempt were not only irregular but invalid and therefore could not confer any Title to the Spiritual Benefits to be conveyed by it but rather a Curse for the Presumption it self in the Person principally guilty and on others also that should prove accessary to it by communicating with him in such his Usurpations § X THAT upon the Supposition of such a confinement all other attempts for gaining the Benefits of the Sacraments from Persons not Authorized to administer them would be invalid ipso jure that is would confer no Legal Title to those Benefits will plainly appear whether we consider God as
a Governour or as a Covenanter If as a Governour then it is necessary that all his inferior Governours be impowered by his Commission to act by his Authority which Commission if they want they cannot be said to act by his Authority and no Illegal Authority can confer a valid Legal Title If as a Covenanter he cannot be thus obliged without his own will and therefore none can celebrate a Covenant in Gods name so as to oblige him to performance of it unless God signify it to be his pleasure to empower him to do so as in Law none can be obliged by anothers act who has not been empowered to act in his name by his Letters of Proxy And he that presumes of himself to make a Covenant wherein God is by him engaged as a Party without being so empowered by God as what he does cannot in any Legal exposition be reputed as Gods Act so neither can it infer any Legal Obligation on him to performance § XI NOR are these Sacraments invalid only as to the Title but also even as to the Possession of the Benefits to be conveyed by them For it is to be considered that the Case is very different betwixt the Power given by God to Ministers for the conveyance of Spiritual Blessings by the Sacraments and that which is given by Worldly Princes to inferior Officers for the conveyance of Secular Favours For because the possessions of Lands are in effect subject to the power of the Sword the inferior Officers who have the power of the Sword and withal have the Lands within the Jurisdiction wherein that power is allowed them as they may decree wrong in giving Lands to Persons who have no Legal Right to them so they may also for a time put them in possession of them But the advantages of the Sacraments are Spiritual and consequently their Possession as well as Right must depend wholly on the Divine pleasure and it cannot be presumed likely to please God to give any validity to the Acts of Vsurpers Nay that a Curse instead of a Blessing is to be feared from Ordinances so administred will appear by the same Principles of Government For there are no Crimes more punishable by these Principles than those which encroach on the Supreme Government and none reputed more Treasonable than pretending a Commission where none is given and counterfeiting the Broad Seal especially when they proceed so far as to raise actual Sedition on these pretences Now of all these Crimes these Vnauthorized Sacraments must be charged by these Principles § XII THE Administrers of them pretend a Commission from God when they have none because they plainly take upon them to intermeddle in that Government which nothing can empower them to intermeddle in without an express Commission at least they cannot expect to be trusted and submitted to by Loyal Subjects without such a pretence They presume to counterfeit the broad Seal for such our dissenting Brethren themselves conceive the Sacraments to be in respect of the New Covenant and accordingly charge the Romanists with counterfeiting the Broad seal of Heaven for adding to the Number of the Sacraments in taking upon them to oblige God as a Party of a Covenant and pretending to set his Seal to it without Power received from him to do so They raise Sedition by setting up Societies within the Jurisdiction of those Churches whereof themselves were Originally Members and yet independent on the Government of those Churches Which if it be not Sedition by the Principles of Government in general not as confined particularly to that which is Civil or Ecclesiastical for my part I must confess I do not understand what Sedition is And certainly the Principles of Government in general as prescinding from both these kinds must be admitted in these Disputes unless we will pretend Ecclesiastical Government not to agree with that which is Secular in as much as one Vnivocal Notion which is indeed to devest it of any thing of Government but a bare Name And then by the same Principles of Government not only they are Traitors who raise the Rebellion but also they who maintein and abet it when it is raised which will involve the Communicants in these Sacraments in this Capital Guilt as well as the Administrers of them § XIII AND that indeed the valid Administration of the Sacraments is thus confined to the Regularly-Ordeined Clergy will appear whether we consider the Sacraments as Confederations into a Body Politick or only as sacred Rites and Ceremonies instituted by God in Order to some great effects to be promoted by them without any design upon a Body Politick If we consider them as confederations into a Body Politick that is as Baptism does admit a Member into the Church and as the Blessed Eucharist does not only signify but perpetuate and effect that Vnion with Christ the Head of this Mystical Body and with their Brethren as Fellow-Members which may make them capable of receiving those vital influences which are here expected the same way as a Member of the Natural Body by being vitally united to the Living Head and Members is made capable of receiving that Communication of Blood and Spirits by which the Life of the whole Body is mainteined Then they will plainly appear to be the Right of Governours For in all Governments the Right of admitting Members into their Societies at first or continuing them in it in order to the instating them in the Legal Priviledges of such Societies is never conceived to belong to particular Members but only to Governours So that if a particular Vnauthorized Member should presume to admit a Member into the Body Politick whereof he is himself a Member such an Act were not only Irregular but Invalid in it self so that a Member so admitted cannot be reputed a Legal Member of such a Society nor consequently be Legally intitled to the Priviledges of it without a new admission For considering that this admission and continuance of Members in a Society does withal intitle them to all the Priviledges of it if the power of this admission and deprivation be not confined to the Governours they must consequently be deprived of the Rewards and Punishments for indeed the Priviledges Men gain by being of any Society are the only Rewards that are proper and natural to invite Men to it or continue them in it and the deprivation of those Priviledges especially if they be so necessary for their Preservation as that the loss of them must inevitably expose Persons so deprived to the greatest inconveniences are the only natural Punishments to discourage Men from doing any thing contrary to the Will of the Governours of such a Society And how possible it is for any Government to be mainteined in a Society where the Rewards and Punishments are not at the disposal of the Governours I believe our Brethren themselves will never be able to explain And therefore pursuant to these Principles for my part I must confess
I do not understand how the validity of Laicks and much more Womens Baptism who by the Apostles Rule are much less capable of Ecclesiastical Authority can be defended unless it may possibly be by that general Delegation which may be conceived to have been graunted to them by the Governours by those Customes and Constitutions which permit them to administer it But it would then be a further Doubt How far such Persons as these are capable of such a Delegation To which I do not intend at present to digress § XIV OR if we consider them in the later sense only as Sacred Rites instituted by God for his publick and solemn Worship to which he has been pleased to annex such Blessings as might encourage Persons to their observation yet even so they will belong to the Clergy if not immediately as Governours yet at least as Persons consecrated and set apart for the Solemnities of the Divine Worship in Publick For under this notion it will be their proper Province to officiate in the Solemnities of Divine Worship and it is plain that the Sacraments do not concern the private Devotions of Closets but that which is performed publickly in Churches That Baptism does so appears from all its ends both as it is an initiation of a Member into the Church as a Multitude at least if not as a Body Politick And as we are hereby united to all Christians by partaking of one Baptism as well as by our believing one God and one Faith And as we here partake of one Spirit with them which plainly concern us not in our private but publick capacities And that the Blessed Eucharist does so too is notorious and appears from all the Discourses of our Authors against the private Masses of the Romanists § XV AND even this later Notion is abundantly sufficient for my purpose both to secure these employments from the Invasions of the Laity and consequently to invest the ordinary Successors into these employments with a power of Government It will be sufficient to secure these employments from the Invasions of the Laity For thus God has always been extremely severe against all encroachments in the Publick Solemnities of his Service usually more severe than against those Sins which our Brethren are generally inclinable to look on as very much more flagitious The Examples of (a) 2 Sam. vi 6 7. 1 Chr. xiii 9.10 Vzzah and (b) 2 Chron. xxvi 16 17 18 19 20 21. Vzziah are very considerable to this purpose But especially that of Saul (c) 1 Sam. xiii who though he had first waited for Samuel (d) Ver. 8.11 seven days together and though the People were (e) Ver. 6.11 scattered from him and those few that followed him were under an excessive (f) Ver. 7. consternation and that the (g) Ver. 12. Philistines were ready to engage him on these disadvantages which must be more formidable to him not having first invoked the Divine assistance Yet because upon all these Considerations he (h) Ver. 12. forced himself as himself professes and offered a burnt offering he had this severe sentence from Samuel at his next meeting that his Kingdom should not be (i) Ver. 13 14. established in his Posterity Which by the way may let our dissenting Brethren understand how unwarrantable their pretence is for venturing on the celebration of Sacraments without a Call though they must otherwise be hindred from all Sacraments in a Regular way by the Ordinary Regular Church Governours For as Saul here might have had more hopes of a merciful return of his Prayers without the Solemnity of Sacrifice in these Circumstances wherein it was impossible to have it performed with its due Solemnity than by presuming to transgress his Order in performing them irregularly so by the same proportion God would more easily excuse our Brethren for the want of Sacraments if they could not have them on Terms consistent with their Consciences than accept of their Devotions accompanied with these Solemnities when they cannot have them without Vsurpation § XVI FOR as in the former Case Saul and our Brethren too had not been chargeable with the Sin of omitting these Solemnities when they could not have them without Sin I mean in our Brethrens Case without the Sin of compliance with Conditions which they think unconscionable if they were to receive them from their Ordinary Governours or of Vsurpation if they should attempt to administer them themselves And besides they might have had great hopes of having such their Prayers heard not only on account of the general Uncovenanted Goodness of God but even of the Equity of the Covenant it self it not being likely that God who is the Party here concerned would ever deprive us of Promises so necessary for us meerly on non-performance of Conditions though Morally only not Naturally impossible I mean such as were impossible to a good Conscience if it would continue good as well as such as were impossible in the nature of the thing So in the later Case where both Saul and they usurp a power of celebrating these Solemnities rather than they would be content to want them they incur the guilt of a Sin in procuring it and that as has appeared from the instances now mentioned of very great heinousness in the esteem of God seeing he has punished it with so great Severity which does not only pollute their Prayers and make them unacceptable even by the Rules of Equity as well as strict Legal Justice but also render them very justly obnoxious to a severe punishment § XVII IT is in vain to pretend that these are Legal examples and therefore not to be extended to the condition of the Gospel For this unlawfullness for any but Levitical Priests to intermeddle with Sacrifices cannot I think be proved from any express prohibition against the other Tribes grounded on any reason singular and proper to that dispensation If it were I should then confess that such Positive Commands would not oblige us now who are under another Legislator than Moses But it is not for our Brethrens interest to deny the present Obligation of several Commands of the Mosaick Dispensation so seemingly Positive as that their Moral reason had been very hardly if at all discoverable by us Antecedently to the Positive Injunction of them Not to mention the prohibition of incestuous Marriages which all believe us at present concerned in there are two very considerable instances for which our Brethren usually plead with no little Zeal that is the morality of the Sabbath and of Tiths wherein they can prove very little if the perpetual seasonableness of the reason on which the Command was grounded at first be not admitted as a sufficient reason to prove its perpetual and present Obligation § XVIII NOW this is the plain Case here The reason of that prohibition against other Tribes besides the Levitical intermeddling with Sacrifice seems wholly derived from the Notion of Consecration which is a
to believe that it was his design that we should judg of his proceedings the same way as we do of those of other Princes that having appointed Visible Means of promulging their pleasures they would not have that taken for their will which is not so promulged according to the Method and Rules which themselves had appointed for it Now this is the Ordinary method observed by such Princes in their promulgations that all their Acts must be promulged by their inferior Officers to whom we may be capable of having an immediate access and that they be Sealed with their Seal and that nothing which is not thus attested should be presumed to be the Act of the Supreme Magistrate seeing that the very constitution of such a Method of proceeding was purposely designed to let Subjects know the true Acts of such Princes from Counterfeits And therefore God having made the same External provisions of Visible Officers to represent him and Visible Seals to confirm what is Covenanted for in his Name it is the same way to be presumed that he would not have any Covenant trusted to as his which is not thus managed and sealed by his Visible Representatives § XII THIS for my part is a very considerable Motive to incline Me to believe that those general Preachings of Pardon and Salvation upon the Conditions of Faith and Repentance which the Ministers are Obliged to declare in Gods name to all Men even Antecedently to their actual initiation into the Church were never intended for immediate Covenants with them upon performance of those Conditions but only as preliminary invitations to dispose themselves for an actual Reception into his Covenant by qualifying themselves by these Conditions of Reception I say it seems to me a very just reason to believe that those general Invitations are no Covenants because they are never Sealed in general but only then when Persons so qualifyed are actually Admitted which had indeed been needless if it had been general on Gods part Obliging him to every particular only on the performance of those Moral Conditions without any further Act of God for the consummating his Obligation in a Form of Law But whether there may be Obligations or not Antecedently to Sealing I am not at present concerned This at least seems clear that Seals are designed as Instruments of Notoreity and therefore that no Obligation can be Authentical that is such as may assure us of its validity without them This I have already proved sufficient for my purpose and shall not need any more to repeat the Arguments whereby I have proved it to be so § XIII BESIDES there lies this futher Presumption in our Case that though it had been graunted to have been possible for God to have made his Promises immediately to the Moral Duties of Faith and Repentance Yet our dissenting Brethren can never prove it necessary that he must have done so And if this be not Necessary the contrary may be also possible Which will suffice for shewing the much greater Security these Moral Duties have of a Title to the Promises if accompanied with these Solemnities than if they be separated from them All who say that Faith and Repentance alone have a Title to these Divine Promises cannot doubt but that they still retain the same Title when they are practiced in the Church's Communion as when they are practiced out of it But the very Possibility of the saylour of their Title as considered separately is enough to show how much more secure it is to practice them in the Church's Communion But considering withal the reasons now given why these Moral Duties alone should not have that Title on the constitution of these Solemnities which they might have expected otherwise this must considerably add to that Security And this greater Security has been proved sufficient for our purpose to shew how our Brethren are Obliged rather to Submit to all Vnsinful Impositions than lose even these Solemnities on which this greater Security has thus appeared to depâ—nd CHAP. VIII The same thing further Prosecuted THE CONTENTS 3. The participation in these External Solemnities with any Legal Validity is only to be had in the External Communion of the Visible Church § I. The Church as taken for the Body of the Elect uncapable of being Communicated with Externally § II.III. That all things here contrived are exactly fitted for a Visible Church and no other § IV.V. § I 3. THEREFORE the participation in these External Solemnities with any Legal Validity is only to be had in the External Communion of the Visible Church And it is only this Legal Validity that can signify any thing to the comfort of the Persons concerned For if they be performed without Legal Validity they can Oblige God to nothing neither to pardon past Sins nor to give Grace for better performance nor to acceptance upon imperfect performance nor a Title to a Supernatural reward And he who cannot Judg himself to have a Title to these nay not a Legal Title to them cannot have reason to think his Spiritual Condition very comfortable Now that these External Solemnities are not to be had in the Church in that notion of it as it is made Invisible which our dissenting Brethren make use of to overthrow all Ecclesiastical Government and Subjection and indeed the intire Notion of its being a Body Politick is very plain For they are not pretended to have any External Solemnities of confederation among themselves as well as with God but those wherein all Visible Professors Hypocrites as well as others communicate with them and therefore by which they are not distinguishable from others Nay that these External Solemnities do not concern them as Elect is not only clear thence that others who are not Elect communicate in them as well as these who are but also that many who are Elect want them as they who are not yet called and they who are Excommunicated clave â—rrante nay and all they who live where Communion cannot be had so that with them no Communion is mainteined even in the participation of the External Symbols themselves § II AND indeed how is it possible to maintein any Visible Communion with them who are not themselves visible Gods secret Decrees are known to none They may indeed be known by the effects and influences of Gods secret Communication with the Spirits of those who are concerned if our dissenting Brethren may be believed so that the Argument may hold good according to them that they who feel those influences may conclude themselves to be Elected Yet will it not hold even in all Elect Persons themselves Not only they who are not as yet called may nevertheless be Elected but also all they who are called but are not yet arrived to that singular degree of proficiency in Religion as to feel these Evidences may notwithstanding not be able as yet to know as much as their own Election even according to our dissenting Brethrens own Principles §
III BUT however it is certain that no Man can be assured of anothers Election And seeing the Persons themselves are thus incapable of being distinguished from others Seeing at least there are no visible distinctives of any Society of them how is it possible to maintein any visible Communion with them by visible Solemnities The Elect may indeed be capable of mainteining a Communion with God because they know him and are known by him without any visible Societies but for want of these necessary conditions of Communication they can never constitute any Society nor maintein any Communication with each other And therefore if this be the Church to which our dissenting Brethren would pay the respect due to the Church all our Sacraments must be perfectly insignificant which seem plainly designed not only nor principally to maintein a visible Communication with God but with each other § IV SEEING therefore that this Legal validity depends on the due administration of these External Solemnities by which they may be believed Obligatory of God by the same Rules of Legal Equity whereby they would be Obligatory of Men And seeing that this is the only way among Men to infer an Obligation on Persons not immediately appearing in their own Persons as God does not in Covenanting with Vs that it may appear that the Persons acting in their behalf be indeed impowered by them to act in their Names and to pass such Acts into Legal Forms by solemn sealing them this must also be conceived requisite to Gods Obligation as it may be valid in Law and as it may be capable of appearing to Vs And therefore his Covenant is Transacted with Vs by Ministers dealing with us immediately and who must make out their Authority to Act and Administer the Seals in his Name the same way as Legal Procurators do by their Deputation from them who were Originally concerned § V NOW all the things on which this Tryal depends are visible the Covenant it self the Seals the Ministers their Call by Authorized Persons and therefore are uncapable of being Transacted any where but in a visible Church and an External Communion And it is further Observable that this way of proceeding will resolve the ultimate Tryal of the validity of these Solemnities into the Authority of the Persons administring them which will more directly prove that the visible Church here supposed must also be a Body Politick And this may suffice at present for proof of this second thing necessary for the Justification of this Proposition That the Ordinary Means of Salvation are confined to the External Communion of the visible Church CHAP. IX That the Grace to be expected in hearing the Word Preached is not sufficient for Salvation without the Sacraments THE CONTENTS 11. That in reference to the Duty of particular Persons the visible Church wherein they may expect to find these Ordinary Means is the Episcopal in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed and particularly that Episcopal Communion under whose Jurisdiction the Persons are supposed to live § I. 1. The Episcopal Communion in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed is that visible Church to whose External Communion these Ordinary Means of Grace are confined This proved by several degrees § II. 1. The Ordinary Means of Grace are now confined to the Sacraments Two things premised The former § III.IV. The later § V. The thing to be proved § VI. Proved two ways 1. Exclusively of other Means of gaining that Grace which is necessary to Salvation besides the Sacrament § VII VIII 1. Of the Word Preached Some things Premised § IX X.XI.XII 1. Much of the Grace conveyed by the Word Preached in the Primitive times was undoubtedly proper to those times and not fit to be expected now § XIII XIV.XV 2. There were reasons proper to those times why such Grace might be expected then which will not hold now for the conviction of the Persons who then received the Spirit § XVI 3. There were also other proper Reasons necessary for the conviction of those with whom they had to deal § XVII 4. That Grace which might otherwise have been expected in attending on the Word Preached is yet not so probably to be expected in the Preaching of Persons Vnauthorized especially if they Preach in opposition to them who are Legally invested with Spiritual Authority § XVIII XIX 5. It is yet farther doubtful whether the Grace which may now be Ordinarily expected at any Preaching whatsoever be so great as to be able to supply the want of the Sacraments at least so great as to secure the Salvation of those who enjoy this Ordinance whilest they want the Sacraments § XX. XXI 6. It is also very doubtful whether all the Grace which is supposed to accompany the Word Preached be any more than what is necessary to dispose the Auditors to receive and believe the Truth of the Doctrines Preached to them Or whether there be any the least ground to believe that they shall there receive that further Assistance which is necessary to help them to Practice what they have thus received and believed § XXII XXIII.XXIV 7. This first Grace of Perswasion if we suppose it alone to accompany the Word Preached will fully answer the design of the Word Preached § XXV 8. The Grace here received seems to be only some actual Influences of the Spirit which wicked men may receive whilest they continue so and which therefore cannot alone be thought sufficient for Salvation not the Person of the Divine Spirit himself § XXVI § I I PROCEED therefore to the second Particular requisite for bringing this Proposition home to my present design viz. That in reference to the Duty of particular Persons that visible Church wherein they may expect to find these Ordinary Means is the Episcopal in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed and particularly that Episcopal Communion under whose Jurisdiction the Persons are supposed to live This will also consist of 2. Parts fit to be considered distinctly 1. That the Episcopal Communion in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed is that visible Church to whose External Communion thâ—se Ordinary Means of Grace are confined And 2. That in respect to particular Persons that Episcopal Communion under which the Persons live is that particular Episcopal Communion to which these Ordinary Means of Salvation are confined in the Case of these particular Persons § II 1. THEN The Episcopal Communion in opposition to all other Societies not Episcopally governed is that visible Church to whose External Communion these Ordinary Means of Grace are confined This I shall endeavour to prove by these degrees 1. That the Ordinary Means of Grace are now confined to the Sacraments 2. That the validity of these Sacraments depend upon the Authority of the Persons by whom they are administred 3. That no other Ministers have this lawful Authority but only they of the Episcopal Communion § III 1. The Ordinary Means of Grace
the Feet I have no need of you but by so much the more those Members which seem to be weaker are yet necessary and as upon those Members of the Body which seem to be less honourable we yet bestow the more abundant honour and our more uncomely parts have the more abundant comeliness So by the same proportion of reason he plainly implies that the more noble and more perfect gifts and Members must yet not be understood to be so perfect as to stand in no need of the Assistance of the least perfect ones And he after tells us that God has therefore followed our example in the Body Mystical also in bestowing (m) v. 24 25. more abundant honour on those Members which most wanted it for this very reason that there might be no SCHISM in the Body From whence our Brethren may be pleased to observe the original of this term which will be of great consequence for stating the true Notion of it But of this I may possibly discourse more largely in the Second Part. At present I only observe that this independence of one Member on another and the consequent withdrawing of the correspondence of any particular Member from the rest how perfect soever he pretends to be is that which the Apostle stigmatizes here expressly by the name of Schism § XVII BUT that I may bring this whole Discourse yet more close to my present design it is yet further observable that among these gifts of the Spirit which are reckoned as necessary for the whole the (a) Rom. xii 8 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from whence the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so frequently given to the Governours of the Church and the (b) Cor. xii 28 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are expressly mentioned And in all likelihood this was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which was then reputed so necessary for Persons to be ordained the (c) 1 Tim. iv 14 2 Tim. I. 6 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which St. Timothy received by imposition of hands And to know who had this gift there was also in in those Ages given another gift the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the (d) 1 Tim I. 18 IV. 14 Prophesies mentioned concerning St. Timothy in relation to his Ordination the tryal by the Spirit in (e) Clem. Rom. Ep. ad Cor. Clemens Romanus and the (f) Clem. Alexandr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apud Ews I.III. Eccl. Hist. c. 23. signification of the Spirit in him of Alexandria For if it had been any natural gift which they were then so careful should be in Persons to be ordained by them it had not been necessary that their Ordainers should have been endued with another gift to know it And particularly this gift of the Spirit to fit Men for Government was a thing the Jews had been so well acquainted with in the Old-Testament-instances of (g) Numb xxvii 18 19 20 21 22 23. Joshua and (h) 1 Sam. x. 9 Saul and (i) 1 Sam. xvi 13 David and many others nay was the very Mystical Vnion which the external Vnction did only signifie and convey from which their Governours were called the (k) 1 Sam. xvi 6 XXIV 6 10. XXVI 9 11 16 23. 2 Sam. I. 14 16. XIX 21 XXIII 1 Lam. iv 20 1 Sam. II. 25 1 Chron. vi 42 XVI 22 Ps. CXXXII 10 17. LXXXIV 9 LXXXIX 38 51. Hab. III. 13 Lords Anointed Pursuant whereunto it is that according to the rules of the Philosophy then current which ascribed the Truth of names rather to the Spiritual things which were represented than to the sensible signs and Types which represented them the Spirit it self is called Vnction by (l) 1 John II. 20 27. St. John that upon these considerations it is very unlikely that this gift should have been wanting in those times where every thing was so fitted to the Jewish Notions and wherewithal it was so very necessary for the Christian themselves though they had less regarded the Jews in this particular than we find they did in many others Nay how near a Title even Ecclesiastical Governours as well as others how little Spiritual soever they were as to their Persons were then thought to have even to the Extraordinary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 on account of that gift of the Spirit which they were supposed to receive upon their investiture into their Office appears from this that the Evangelist gives this as the reason why even Caiaphas Prophecyed because he was High Priest (m) S. John XI 51 that time when he did so If therefore this was a gift which obliged all that wanted it to a dependence on them who had it how much less perfect soever they were in other regards then it will plainly follow that no pretence of Perfection whatsoever could exempt from a dependence on their Governours Which will more immediately reach my purpose than if they had depended on the Sacraments themselves or any other Exercises or Solemnities of the Ecclesiastical Assemblies § XVIII AND the same thing seems very probable from hence that among the Members which are instanced in as necessary the Head is mentioned as one Certainly there is no office in the Body Mystical so suitable with that of the Head in the Body natural as that of Governing Nor can it here be understood of Christ who is indeed frequently called the Head of the Church because such a Head is here spoken of as (n) 1 Cor. XII 21 cannot say to the Feet I have no need of you that is such a Head as is capable of receiving necessary offices from the other Members as well as of performing necessary offices for them And though it should he understood of particular Governours yet it cannot be thought more strange that in this Allegory all particular Governours should be represented under the Metaphore of one Head than it is that all their Churches are frequently in the Scripture called one Church and here are represented in a Metaphore exactly answering the other that of one Body And the utmost that can be made of this expression will only amount to the one Episcopacy in St. (o) de Vnit Eccles. Cyprian which he makes common to all particular Bishops And it deed when one Body had been mentioned before it had spoiled the suitableness of the Metaphore to have mentioned any more than one Head Though indeed a shorter way might have been taken for giving an account of this whole matter that it is not distinction of Persons but distinction of (a) Rom. XII 4 Office which is here taken notice of by the Apostle for the constitution of a distinct Member And therefore though the Persons of Governours be different yet so long as their office is undoubtedly the same and it is the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that qualifies them for that office that is sufficient to shew how they may be here all accounted for under the Notion of one Head And if we
Law from their great complaints in time of exile and their hard opinion of the state of excommunicated Persons and from that general Popular Notion then prevailing among them whereby they ascribed more to the punctual observance of these external Sanctifications than to real Holiness it self Phil. iii. 6.9 These things were accounted the very Righteousness of the Law and these were the vulgar measures of Popular Holiness But though this be abundantly sufficient to shew that this use of this Priviledg cannot be justified in the Mystical Israel on account of their being Israel which was never challenged by the carnal Israel themselves nor ever intended for them yet to give all possible satisfaction in this Case it is further observable § XII 4. That the whole contrivance of things by the Apostles plainly supposes that they also did not allow of this plea for excusing any from the publick Ordinances They plainly suppose that the most perfect as well as others stood in need of Church-Society They plainly formed the Church into a Body Politick and obliged all the most perfect as well as others to observe their respective Duties which was not done by the Philosophers who maintained our Adversaries Notions They plainly confine the Graces of God to the Sacraments that so no Persons might on any pretence of Perfection think they did not need the Sacraments unless they were withall so perfect as not to need the Graces also conferred in the Sacraments They make the influences of the Spirit derived from Christ the Head to particular Members by the mediation of other Members the same way as the vital influences are derived in the Body Natural They confine his influences to his Body and make the Sacraments to be the only ordinary means of joyning or continuing a Member in that Body They make the casting-out of the Churches Communion the same thing as a delivering over unto Satan 1 Cor. v. 5 1 Tim. i. 20 Vid. cap. xi §. 4 5 6. and describe the condition of such Persons as very sad that they are in the World in Darkness nay in a state of Death it self These are all of them other contrivances of things than they would ever have settled if they had allowed any Plea of Perfection whatsoever as sufficient to excuse the pretender to it from the External Communion of the visible Church § XIII And further 5. It is very considerable in this whole matter that even those Philosophers themselves who allowed this Notion of Perfection as sufficient to excuse Persons who were indued with it from the Sacrifices and some of those grosser ways of Worship of their Deities which were more suitable to popular capacities who thought a wise man might Sacrifice as acceptably with a little meal as others with a Hecatomb nay that his Prayers might be more acceptable than the Sacrifices of others yet never thought of extending it to the Mysteries and forms of initiation into the more familiar acquaintance with their Deities These they were so far from thinking meanly of as that indeed they were the most perfect sort of Persons for whom they thought them most proper Especially the greater Mysteries or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were purposely so contrived that meaner spirited Persons might never have the courage to undertake them Therefore the Aegyptian initiations were so extremely severe that they thought to have terrified Pythagoras himself from his curiosity to be acquainted with them and Appion Joseph cont Appion Nonn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nazianz. the Jews great Adversary died of his Circumcision which was only one of them Therefore the preparatory tryals of Mithras were so many and so rigorous that very many perished under them To this end were their frightful shapes their shewing their Images only with Torches not by day-light their tedious and solemn preparations only to advance the horrour of the Spectacle Therefore they were first expiated by all the Purgations proper in the respective Cases that so they might approach the Idol it self with the most exquisite Purity Thence the Proclamation before the Orphaicks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to warn all impure Persons to beware how they ventured to approach them And therefore they are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and are said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and they are principally recommended by the Pythagoreans for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which they make the highest pitch of Philosophy and oppose to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Purgation of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which they conceived proper for Beginners § XIV And to these the Primitive Christians thought the Lords supper answerable and accordingly spoke of it in all that sacred style which the Philosophers had used concerning these greater Mysteries as may be seen punctually observed among very many others by the Pseudo-Areopagite And yet even the lesser Purgative Mysteries were not so neglected as that any Person how perfect soever durst presume immediately to venture on the greater without these preliminary expiations No Moral Purity whatsoever was thought so great as to make these ritual Purgatious needless to him who was desirous to initiate himself in any of their particular Religions The most Perfect Persons among them and they who were thought to approach nearest to the Purity of the gods themselves nay who were often themselves called gods in such a sense as the name required when it was communicated to inferiour Beings As they often thought it necessary to initiate themselves so when they were admitted they were not admitted on other terms than the Ordinary Lustrations Such were the a Hercules in the Eleusin Scholiast Aristoph in Plut. Schol. in Homer Il. Theta in Tzetzes Lycophr Alex. Argonauts in the Samothraclan Apollon Rhod. Argon Castor and Pollux Plutarch Thes. Heroes the b Demetrius Policrates Plutarch Demetr Adrian Spartian Antoninus Capitolin Emperours and the c Pythagoras Jamblich de vita Pyth. Ch. 16. Philosophers Of all which sorts there are several instances of Persons who were initiated and initiated in the common way but I believe no one Precedent can be given of any who were thought too Perfect either to need the initiation it self or any one external Rite with which it was ordinarily performed At least they were so extremely few as that no modest man can in initiation of such Precedents find in his heart to reckon himself in the number No wise man who throughly considers and understands his own interest can venture the loss he may suffer if he should neglect them on confidence of a thing wherein he may so easily prove mistaken Which will again assert the necessity of Baptism which in the Christian Institution was answerable to these lesser Mysteries But I shall not now enlarge further to shew that their Sacraments were rather thought to hold proportion to the Heathen Mysteries than their Sacrifices because I may possibly take an occasion to insist more largely on it on another occasion
of Governours as well as Governed which were all qualified for their offices by Gifts of the Spirit a 1 Cor. xii 28 29. Eph. iv 11 Apostles Evangelists Prophets Pastors and Teachers which were all only useful for the Church in this World and only for their benefit as united in Assemblies these Gifts being generally of that nature as that others were more concerned in them than they who had them Their Gifts were also of the same kind and many of them more principally designed for the edification of Believers than the conviction of Infidels Such were the gifts of b 1 Cor. xiii 2.xiv.2 knowing Mysteries Interpretation c 1 Cor. xii 10.xiv.26 of Tongues of d 1 Cor. xi 4 5 xiii.9.xiv.1 3 4 5.22 24 31 39. Rom. xii 6 1 Thes. v. 20 Prophesying and e 1 Cor. xiv 14 15. Praying especially of that office of the Eucharist f 1 Cor. xiv 16 where the Idiot had his set part assigned him and was to answer Amen These were the very employments of the Synaxes in that Age. And therefore certainly the Church thus united by such Gifts and Offices of the Spirit must needs have been that Body of them which joyned in the celebration of their publick Assemblies and considered under that very Notion as they were united in those Assemblies for which alone these Gifts and Offices were useful And plainly the Apostles design being as I have elsewhere observed in all these Discourses to prevent the falling away of the Persons to whom he writes either to Judaism or Gentilism or any of the Heresies which then began to appear there could be nothing more apposite to this purpose than to perswade them to keep to this external Body as united by the celebration of the same publick Assemblies whereby they were visibly and notoriously distinguished from those erroneous Societies and nothing more disagreeable than our Adversaries Notion of a multitude not a body of Elect not distinguishable from others by such notorious Characters as might be prudently useful by way of Argument § XII BESIDES the similitude of a Vine used by our Saviour was the same which had been used concerning the carnal Israel in the Old Testament Psal. lxxx 8 14 15. Isa. v. 1 7 xxvii.2 Jer. ii 21 Ezek. xix 10 Hos. x. 1 and therefore very fitly applyed to the Spiritual and Mystical Israel in the New according to that way of arguing which is so universally observed by the sacred Writers of the New Testament And then considering that the Christians made the Spiritual Israel a Society in the same sence wherein the carnal Israel had been so before nay allowed of something suitable to those very means by which they were confederated into a Society Instead of Circumcision they continued not only the Mystical Circumcision of the heart but Baptism which had been a means taken up by the Jews before the Preaching of the Christian Religion and which they thought more countenanced by the Prophets who had foretold the state of Christianity than Circumcision it self was and withal thought it more agreeable to the more Spiritual nature of the Christian Religion in comparison of the Jewish And so for Sacrifices though they rejected the bloody ones which they also thought discountenanced by those same Prophesies which had predicted the state of Mystical Judaism yet they allowed a Mystical Melchisedechian Sacrifice not only of the Morals of Religion but also under those very Elements and Symbols which they supposed predicted and Typified in those fame Writers who had spoken so disparagingly of the bloody Sacrifices Yet still these means of confederation though they were indeed more agreeable to the nature of a Spiritual Religion than those among the Jews were still external and therefore as proper for confederating an external Society as those were in the room of which they succeeded § XIII AND 4. It is further observable that though the immediate design of the Sacred Writers seems to have been to secure the Persons to whom they wrote in the external Communion of the Church in that Age wherein they wrote yet the reasons used by them for this purpose are such as concern the Church as a Church and so as suitable to the later Ages of the Church as those earlier ones wherein they were first used Indeed if the Argument used to prove their obligation to continue in the external Communion of the Church had been this that they could not otherwise partake of the miraculous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and manifestations of the Spirit than as those Gifts and manifestations were proper to that Age so the Argument would lose its force in succeeding Ages which could not pretend to those Gifts and manifestations But when I consider that those Gifts and manifestations in that Age did generally accompany the Graces of the Spirit and that therefore it is no good Argument to conclude that the Spirit was only given for extraordinary purposes because he was pleased to manifest himself by Gifts and Appearances that were indeed extraordinary when I consider that it is the Spirit as a Principle of Spiritual Life of which they are supposed to be deprived by falling away from that external Communion nay as a Principle of Spiritual Life to themselves when I consider that the Church being called Christ they are supposed to lose their interest in Christ and all his saving Graces by separating from the Communion of the Church to lose their interest in his Redemption to lose their interest in him by losing his Spirit which whosoever has not is none of his when I consider that by falling away from their Baptismal Obligations they are supposed to have forfeited all the advantages of their Baptism their illumination their tasting of the heavenly gift their participation of the Holy Ghost their tasting of the good Word of God and of the Powers of the World to come and so to have forfeited them as to need Renovation as intire as if they never had enjoyed them nay to have forfeited their whole interest in the New Covenant which sure respects the Graces of the Spirit more principally than his Gifts I say when I consider these things I cannot but think that the Graces here spoken of on these occasions are as well the Graces properly so called as the Gifts of the Spirit those of them which are to be ordinarily expected in all Ages as those which were proper to that those of them which are absolutely necessary for Salvation as well as those which were only more convenient for the more advantagious procurement of Salvation And sure we have reason to expect as that these ordinary necessary Graces of the Spirit should be continued to these later Ages wherein they are still as necessary as they were at first so that they should be continued in the same means of conveyance by which they were communicated at first And we have the rather reason to expect that they should be continued by the
same means of conveyance because if they be continued at all especially if they be continued by way of a Covenant which may afford such a right as may be Legally challenged it must be continued by virtue of those same Provisions which were then made there being no others pretended since nor indeed to be ever expected for the future And therefore if in those times these Graces of the Spirit could not have been expected out of the external Communion of the Church it must follow by the same proportion of reasoning that they are not to be expected now nor for ever § XIV 5. THEREFORE in order to this Mystical participation of this Grace which is not otherwise to be expected than by these Mystical means by which God himself has designed its conveyance it is absolutely necessary as far as an ordinary means can be so that we partake of the Lord's Supper This plainly appears from the Principles now mentioned 1 Cor. x. 17 For we being many are one Bread and one Body For we are all partakers of one Bread Where it is plain 1. From the coherence that the Bread here spoken of is no other than that which we receive in the Lords Supper 2. That the reason why we are said to partake of one Bread is because it is said to be broken before we receive it so that all are supposed to communicate of the same loaf 3. That by our communicating in this one Bread which must therefore be broken before we can communicate in it we are in a Mystical sence said to be one Bread as I have observed that Mysteries especially those of Divine appointment do not only signifie but also cause the things signified by them And 4. That because this â—read is also called the Body of Christ therefore our partaking of this one Bread 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word properly used concerning it when it is spoken of as meat is our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our Communion or rather Communication in this Body And 5. That it hence follows by the same Rule of Mystical reasoning that we are said to be one Body because we do communicate in one Body as we were said to be one Bread by our partaking of one Bread This plainly shews that all the advantage which we are to expect from Christ by being Members of his Mystical Political Body the Church is to be derived from our communicating in the Lords Supper because it is by this Communion that we become Members of this Mystical Political Body But it further appears from the reasoning of the Apostle in this place how it is that we are hereby made one Body which will very much conduce to the clearing of the Argument deduced from it and for shewing the necessity of our becoming Members of this Body 6. Therefore it is also further clear that the one Body of which we are made Members by communicating in this one Bread is no other than Christs Body This appears from the words immediately preceding 1 Cor. x. 16 The Bread which we break is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ and besides from the reasoning as I have now explained it For the reason why we come to be made one Body by our partaking of one Bread being plainly the words of Institution in which Christ has called that Bread of which we partake his Body it plainly appears that the Body of which we partake by this Bread is no other than his Body and that his Personal Natural one This plainly appears because the Body of which he speaks when he calls the Eucharistical Bread his Body is plainly that which he says was broken for us according to St. Paul in this Epistle and which was given for us according to St. Luke 1 Cor. xi 24 Luk. xxii 19 But this cannot be understood of the Mystical but only of his Personal Body The consequence whereof will be that the whole Church becomes one Body Mystical of Christ by this participation of his Personal and Natural Body in the Lords Supper § XV AND because the right understanding of this will be of use not only for my present purpose but for preventing many popular misunderstandings in this matter particularly that of Transubstantiation and because the things I have to say on this Subject are such as at least I have not seen observed by others I hope it may prove not an altogether ungrateful divertisement to the Reader to endeavour an explication of this Mysterious contrivance which yet I intend to dispatch with as much brevity as the Argument will permit 1. Therefore the great design of Christ plainly appears to have been that Mystical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so much spoken of in the Mystical Philosophy of that Age and spoken of as the peculiar office of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This St. Paul himself speaks of elsewhere that he came to make all one Eph. ii 14 15 16. And our Saviour makes this the great design of his Prayer for his Disciples That they all may be one as thou Joh. xvii 21 See Ver. 11 22 23. Joh. xi 52 Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be one in us that the World may believe that thou hast sent me So St. John expresses the end of our Saviours death to have been that he might gather together in ONE the Children of God which were scattered 2. This Vnion is expressed according to the way usual in the Scriptures to express the whole by an enumeration of particulars by his being in us and our being in him and indeed by this later only as a consequence of the former so that the very reason why we are said to be in him is because he is first supposed to be in us And the true reason of this consequence seems to be that cautious way then taken up of speaking concerning God that they would not allow him to be in any thing for fear of the confinement which weak imaginations might fancy from such a way of speaking To correct this error of the imagination they invented contradictory ways of speaking concerning him Porphyr Sent. 40. ex sententiâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They made him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 · Everyâ—where in regard of the dependence of things on him and yet no where in regard of confinement Of which kind this way of speaking also is that he is in us in regard of his influence on us and we in him in regard of the independence of his influences and the immensity of his presence 3. Therefore the Scripture speaking of Christ does distinguish him under two considerations as to his flesh wherein he suffered and as to his Spirit by which he was raised and glorified Luk. xxiv 26 Phil. ii 8 9. And it is observable that the raising and glorifying of Christ in the Spirit are grounded on his first having suffered in the flesh Accordingly our
for it But he who receives from him what he had power to give him is not responsible for his Personal faults but has a just Title to the thing conferred by him and such as will be secured to him by the Law by which he is impowered to give it to him § III AND therefore by an invalid Administration I mean such a one only as is performed by him who has no Legal Power of administring the Sacraments From such a one the Communicant now described may indeed receive the external Symbols but God is not obliged by any act of his to confer the Spiritual benefits signified and intended to be Legally conveyed by those Symbols And it is from God that these Spiritual benefits are to be received if they be received at all § IV AND further yet by this validity I mean such a one as may be known and judged of by the Communicant That he who receives the Symbols from him whom he knows to have no Legal power of administring them or whom he might know not to have that power by such Rules as all Societies take care of for deriving Power to Succession and which withal they all take care that they should be notorious to all even the meanest capacities who use their diligence to know them as all are certainly obliged to do when their Practice is concerned in knowing them for the preventing Vsurpations of Power and all the consequent mischiefs which Societies must suffer from such Usurpations I mean that such a Communicant who by these means as they are contrived for the settlement of Christian Societies as Christians can know that he from whom he receives these Symbols was never Legally invested with a Power of administring them can never rationally expect that God should second such a Ministry by making good the Spiritual benefits which are Symbolically conveyed by this Ministry And that he who knows this or may know it by the means now mentioned cannot rationally look on it otherwise than as a perfect Nullity obliging God to nothing and therefore cannot enjoy any rational solid comfort from such Ordinances This I may therefore dispatch the more briefly now because several of the Principles requisite for proving it have been already discoursed on other occasions Such as those are I shall only lay together for clearing the present Consequence § V 1. THEREFORE the Spiritual advantages of the Sacraments are not immediately conveyed in the external participation of them And all Laws make a real difference between these two sorts of conveyances when the thing it self is immediately conveyed and when only a Right to it is conveyed by which the Receiver may recover it from him who has it in possession For example he who is actually put in possession of a piece of Land by him who has no Authority to give him possession does however continue in possession till he be again Legally dispossest And the Nullity of such a Givers act does not appear in the immediate effect but only in this that because he can confer no Legal Right therefore he cannot secure the Possession he has given whenever the Law shall take notice of what he has done But he who has the same Land conveyed to him only by promises before witnesses or by Instruments or even by earnest is not as yet put in Possession of the Land it self but is still left to the Law to recover the possession of the Land so conveyed from him who is as yet possessed of it And if the Promise or Instrument or Earnest be given by such a Person who has no Legal Power to give them the Nullity of such a grant is such as will never be likely so much as to gain him an actual Possession § VI THIS is exactly the Case of the Sacraments The Act of the Minister does not give possession of the Spiritual benefits of them but the giving of the Symbols by the Minister confers a Legal Right and obliges God to put well-disposed Communicants in actual possession of those Spiritual Graces where the Symbols themselves are validly administred that is where the Person who administers has received a Power from God of acting in his name in their administration But on the contrary where the Person who gives the Symbols is not empowered by God to act in his Name in giving them as they cannot convey the thing it self so neither can they any Right to it from God They cannot oblige God to perform what is further to be done by him but by Acting in his Name nor can any Acting in his Name oblige him but that which is by his own appointment So that such a Gift as this is can have no effect in Law seeing it confers neither the Right nor the Possâ—ssion of the thing designed by it Which is that I mean by a perfect Nullity § VII AND it is observable further 2. That the reason of this does hold not only in Acts of Authority that no Authority can be derived from God unless the Persons pretending in his name to give it be Authorized by him to give it 〈◊〉 but also in Deeds of Gifts None can oblige God in a Legal way to give that which it is only in his Power to give without Power received from him to Act in his Name in obliging him to such a Gift so that their Gift may in a Legal way of estimation be counted his and as his oblige him to performance This is no more in Gods Case than what is thought just and reasonable in the Gifts of the meanest private Persons Even such are not obliged by the Acts of others unless they have first Authorized them to Act in their name by express Procuration This I note that our Adversaries may see that our present reason will hold whether we do as yet suppose the Church to be a Body Politick or not and therefore though we should not suppose that God acted herein by way of Authority nor that the Persons empowered by him received any more Jurisdiction over the Church as a Society than those private Persons do receive when they are Authorized also by private Persons to make Legal conveyances and to undertake Legal obligations in their behalf and withal to let them see that though as yet they granted no more Authority in the Administrators of the Sacraments than what is necessary for a Legal conveyance of a Gift yet that will oblige others to depend on them in order to the obteining of that Gift which will easily infer an Authority of Jurisdiction § VIII AND 3. There is much less reason to expect that God should perform what is done in his Name by such unauthorized Persons than to expect it from ordinary Governours Ordinary Governours may be imposed on either to think they have made Promises where they have not or may be overswayed with kindness to the Usurpers Persons or to the Persons to whom the conveyance was made or by the exigency of their affairs or by some other
of the Spirit on which that right is grounded § XII AND if they would withal consider that the most essential parts of the Office of the Ministry depends on their being representatives of God rather than on their being representatives of the People that this is it that gives Authority to their Preaching that it is the word of God which is preached by them and that they are appointed by God himself to preach that word that this is it which obliges God to perform what they promise in his name that they are Authorized to make those Promises and to make them in his name that this is it which may encourage them to expect those excitations and assistances which accompany the Preaching of the word when it is preached by a lawful Authority that the validity of all they do as Ministers and as Governours of a Body Politick depends on this that they are Authorized by him who has made the Church a Body Politick and endowed it with priviledges that the acceptableness even of their publick solemn Prayers in the name of the Multitude does not so much depend on their being appointed by the Multitude to be their representatives as on their being made by God masters of requests and as the Persons whom he has declared himself pleased particularly to accept If I say they had considered these things certainly they could not have thought themselves to have a right of disposing of the office of the Ministry for their interest in things belonging to that office which are of smaller importance when their interest does so evidently fail in matters of the greatest consequence and which are withal so essential to the office They could not think that because they can easily chuse a Person to Preach and Pray and administer Sacraments for them therefore they could also give them that which might give them Authority for Preaching or make their Prayers acceptable or confer a valid title to the benefits expected by the Sacrament § XIII BUT the reason of their mistakes in these and the like particulars is very plain They have called in question all those benefits which depend on the Divine appointment And when they have thus left them nothing but what they may do though they had no other Authority than what men are able give them it cannot be thought strange that they should think their proceedings valid though ratified only by a Humane Authority Certainly men may Preach and Pray as movingly as to all natural Arts of insinuation they may express themselves as fluently and properly and pronounce as pathetically by their natural endowments without a Divine Authority as others can with a Divine Authority if they want those natural endowments And they may administer the Sacraments with a solemnity as affecting and the Sacraments so administred by them may as naturally resemble the things which they were designed to signifie and all the Devotion which may naturally be derived either from the warmth or fluency of speaking or the gravity of the administration or the natural representation of the Mysteries commemorated in the Sacraments and all the Grace which may be expected by Persons so devoutly disposed as we may suppose the Persons to be of whom we are now speaking and especially which may be expected by them on our Adversaries Principles if the Grace be given either as a natural improvement of those Acts of Devotion on the same natural account as other Acts do naturally either produce or confirm habitual inclinations to the like Acts or purely as rewards in point of generosity without any regard to a promise or a Covenant or a ratification of Persons Authorized or any thing that might oblige God in a Legal way All these benefits I say of these Ministeries may equally be expected from Persons who have no Divine Authority as from those who have And therefore it cannot be admired that Persons who allow no further benefits of their Ministry should think a Humane Authority for the designation of their Persons sufficient for all the effects of their Ministry But if they had but thought how the whole real benefit of their Ministry does depend on the lawfulness of their Call to it and upon the lawfulness of their Call from none other but God himself they must needs have been prompted to another judgment in this matter pursuant to these measures § XIV BUT as none but God can confer the right to the Spiritual benefits here received so neither 2. Can any but he put any in possession of them I shall not now repeat what I have said elsewhere concerning this I only observe it at present to shew that all that men can do in this matter can have no effect that can possibly intitle their actings to the name of Authority when they can neither give the title nor the possession of the benefits conveyed by these Ordinances And though they could have enjoyed possession for a while yet alas what could that signifie for their comfort when they know that righteous judgment will at length prevail And then their past enjoyments will be so far from being reckoned to their advantage as that the Vsurpation of them for a time will be an aggravation of their guilt Their very enjoyment of the Elements themselves will then prove a great mischief if they have enjoyed them sacrilegiously though such an enjoyment was never capable of affording any solid advantage All that I would therefore infer at present is that all the Authority which any Creature can pretend to in a matter of this nature must be derived from God and derived from him by a positive and express donation or by that contrivance of things under the state of the Gospel which he has been pleased actually to observe Which will oblige all who are desirous to inform themselves solidly herein rather to enquire into the establishments of God than to trust their own conjectural reasonings concerning them antecedently to Revelation what they think fit to have been observed by him and what they think themselves would have done if they had had the management of his design § XV 2. Therefore I proceed to consider the actual establishment of God to shew that as the Multitude cannot challenge this right of administring the Sacraments by any Original inherent right so neither can they by any actual donation And this is so plain as that our Adversaries themselves do not that I know of pretend to any Text where any such a gift is expresly mentioned How will they therefore pretend otherwise to know Gods mind in such a thing as this is which so intirely depends on his arbitrary pleasure Will they plead primitive precedent for it But we never find our Saviour pleading any Authority though strictly examined by the Jews concerning his Authority besides that of his Father Joh. xx 21 And as his Father sent him so he sent his Apostles who are always described as Persons sent by God himself not by any Humane Authority So
by this Opinion as it was mainteined then if they did not think the peculiarity of this Power sufficient to constitute a distinct Order What matter is it whether they owned the word or no so long as they owned the thing which our Adversaries may possibly think more properly imported by the word Whatever the word do most properly signifie yet when we use it as we do now to judg of the meaning of those who used it we are to take it as they understood it how improperly soever they understood it And we have the rather reason to do so in this case because the word had no notorious sense antecedent to those Ages which they might be obliged to mean and which they might therefore be presumed to mean where they did not very expresly declare the contrary The terms of Ordo and Gradus as they were terms of Art were intirely introduced by themselves unmentioned in the Sacred Writers no nor as the constant language of the Church neither of the Catholick Church nor even of the Latine Church for many of the most ancient Ages And why might not they be allowed to impose their own signification on their own terms § XII IF our Adversaries say that the allowance of this Power only to Bishops will make them a distinct Order then they must confess that the Authors we are speaking of were of our mind in the thing and of theirs only in the use of the words which they will find will stand them in no stead for the present design of proving their Succession They must then say that those Authors make Episcopacy really a distinct Order with us though they were pleased to call it only a distinct Degree with them But if they grant that this Power is not sufficient to make them a distinct Order we shall not be very solicitous whether they use that word so long as they acknowledg this Power This Power of Government being appropriated to the Bishops will in the consequence appropriate the Power of Ordination to them not only as Ordination implies the giving of the Power of Government to inferior Governours but also as it is requisite for the ends of Government not to give simple Presbyters a Power of giving their Power to others for fear of that independence which would in course follow thereupon even in the exercise of that Power Whatever our Adversaries may think of this reasoning in it self yet certainly they cannot deny it to have been agreeable to the actual Notions of those times which is as much as I am concerned for at present § XIII AND if we would according to another Notion of those times found the Power over the Corpus Christi Mysticum on the power over the Corpus Christi verum yet even so there was room left for asserting the Power of Ordination to the Bishops alone For though the Power over the Corpus Christi verum was taken for the highest exercise of Power that was communicated to Mortals yet even in that exercise of Power there were several Degrees which might very probably incline them to acknowledg a distinction rather in Degree than in Order between the Persons distinguished by them and this distinction of Degrees was sufficient for appropriating the Power of Ordination to the Bishops alone Even in the exercise of that Power he who had a Power to give his Power to another must be supposed to have a greater degree of that same Power than he who had it only for his own Person and so that it must expire with his Life Whether this was a distinct Power or a distinct Degree of the same Power seems to have been the main dispute between them who disputed whether Episcopacy were a distinct Order or Degree from Presbytery Whoever was in the right it is sufficient for my purpose that they were both agreed in this that this Supreme whether we call it Power or only Degree of Power was appropriated to the Bishops so that it was never so much as given to ordinary Presbyters And what matter was it whether they called the Character of the Bishop a new one oâ— an extension of the old one which he had when he was made Presbyter These were also terms first brought into general use by themselves from the private use of St. Augustine and it was in their pleasure how they would use them It is sufficient for me that the Power of ordeining others was not grounded barely on the Character it self but on the Character as extended and therefore could not be validly challenged by them who had the Character alone given them without its extension § XIV AND though the Power of Jurisdiction over the Corpus Christi Mysticum for term of Life were grounded on the Power over the Corpus Christi verum for time of Life also so that he who had the Power over the Corpus Christi verum could oblige the Mystical Body to what terms he pleased and set up what Jurisdiction he pleased over them when they could not have the true Body without him yet so it self there was a right reservable to the Bishop over the true Body which might both oblige Priests to a dependence on the Bishop and the whole Church to a nearer and more necessâ—ry dependency on Episcopacy than on the Priesthood The Priests not having the exercise of their Power over the true Body but by appointment of the Bishop must oblige the Mystical Body to a greater dependence on the Bishop than on Priests in the exercise of this common Power For this will it put in the Power of the Bishop to deprive the Mystical Body of the true Body if he should forbid the Priests the exercise of their Power though against their consent and will withal put it out of the Power of the Priest to oblige the Mystical to any dependence on them in opposition to the Bishop by denying them the true Body when the Bishop requires them to give it because their presuming to refuse it in such a case must be an invasion of the Bishops right and must consequently infer a Nullity in what they do without right to do it But the Priests not having this Power given them of giving their Power to others this must in regard of this dependence of the Mystical Body on the true Body free the People from a dependence on the Priesthood which cannot secure them of the true Body in another generation And on the contrary the Bishops having this Power given them and to them alone this will oblige the Mystical Body to depend on them for a Succession because they alone can continue the administration of the true Body to them through all Ages of Succession § XV AND as these Doctrines are very reconcilable with that of making Episcopacy and Presbytery one Order on the Principles now mentioned so they were certainly the actual sense of those who followed that Doctrine in that Age. Most certainly they who were of this opinion could not
his own Order that can perform the Ceremony to him because we suppose him to be supreme and there cannot be two such in one Society And if he must depend on the supreme powers of the neighbouring Societies for an investiture so that he could not be validly invested without them this would both be dangerous in suspicious times and would besides be very prejudicial to the liberty of the particular Society for which such a Governour were concerned § XVI AND therefore I for my part am so little solicitous for any consequence that may hence be inferred to the prejudice of my Cause as that I am apt to think that this must have been the way observed at first in the making of Bishops how absolute soever I conceive them to have been when they were once made and how invalid soever I think the actings of Presbyters would be which were done without his consent after his Consecration though they were those very Presbyters by whom he had been Consecrated And I wish our Adversaries had Authorities suitable to their confidence either better than conjectures or if no better yet more ancient than the time of St. Hierome whose contemporary he was who wrote the Commentaries under the name of St. Ambrose much more than the very exceptionable testimony and Age of Eutychius This seems best to agree with the absoluteness of particular Churches before they had by compacts united themselves under Metropolitans and Exarchs into Provincial and Diocesan Churches as the word Diocese was understood in the Eastern parts in the language of that Age. And this seems to have been fitted for the frequent Persecutions of those earlier Ages when every Church was able to secure its own Succession by its own power without depending on the uncertain opportunities of the meeting of the Bishops of the whole Province And the alteration of this practice the giving the Bishops of the Province an interest in the choice of every particular Colleague seems not to have been so much for want of power in the particular Churches to do it as for the security of the compacts that they might be certain of such a Colleague as would observe them whose Communicatory Letters they might therefore not scruple to receive when they had first by their own act satisfied themselves of the trustiness of his Person before his Consecration However the matter was I cannot but think that it was the interest of the neighbouring Bishops in the correspondence of every particular Bishop that first occasioned and procured their interest in his Election Nor can I tell how the Succession could have been so secure otherwise unless every Bishop had named and constituted his Successor in his Life time for which they had precedents in the Successions of the Philosophers in imitation whereof I have already observed how probable it is that these Ecclesiastical Successions were framed But then withall as that way was uncertain so when the Philosophers failed to nominate their own Successors then the Election was in the Schools But this would even then only warrant such acts of those Presbyteries which held correspondence with their own Bishops and with the Episcopal Communion but in these modern Ages it can only excuse those to whom the power was returned by the Bishops who had been peaceably possessed of it for many Centuries before This I note that it may not be drawn into a precedent now any further than it is fit and reasonable CHAP. XXV The Nullity of the same Ordinations proved from the right of Episcopal Presbyteries as Presbyteries THE CONTENTS 2. Even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government from the right which Episcopal Presbyteries ought to have in giving Orders as they are considered as Presbyteries § I II. This proved by these degrees 1. Though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is that correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination § III IV V VI. 2. Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in which he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them § VII 3. The Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders Applied to single Presbyters § VIII To whole Presbyteries made up of overvoted single Presbyters § IX X XI 4. No Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in any particular Episcopal Church as Presbyterian without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries § XII A smaller over-voted number of Presbyters cannot validly dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries § XIII XIV XV. The power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter is a right of the Presbytery in common by the Principles of Aristocratical Government § XVI XVII XVIII XIX An Objection answered § XX XXI XXII Another Objection answered § XXIII XXIV Retorted § XXV The reason of the Retortion given § XXVI § I BUT 2. There is also another just exception against the validity of our Adversaries Ordinations even from the right of Aristocratical Government and that is from the right of their Fellow-Presbyters as well as themselves If we should allow the right of Ordination to Presbyters as Presbyters as our Adversaries desire yet that will not justifie the validity of the Ordinations of single Presbyters no nor of a smaller part in opposition to the greater by which it is over-voted And our Adversaries cannot defend their Ordinations at present any better than by the single acts of particular Presbyters over-voted by the greater part of the Presbyteries of which they were originally Members Their first Ministers which began the separation were much the smaller part of the respective Presbyteries to which they were related And though they might if they had continued in the Communion of the Church have had their single votes in all the acts of Government and the disposal of all the Offices which by the practice then obteining were allowed to the whole Presbyteries yet they could never have obteined that the Offices disposed of by their single votes must have been validly disposed of and ratified by the rest by whom they were over-voted And sure they cannot expect to be gainers by their unpeaceableness that their single votes must be esteemed of greater value out of the Church than in it that they who could not have made Presbyters in the Church against the prevailing vote of their Brethren should be allowed to make as many as they please on condition they will divide from their Brethren and make themselves the Heads
interessed in common as that the very same performance which is eminently serviceable to one may for that very cause be as eminently disserviceable to the other as when they are in a state of hostility However it is certain that as their interests are very different so the means of serving those interests are very different also and therefore that there is no real consequence that he who has indeed obliged one Society must in doing so oblige all others also § VI BUT the benefits of the Sacraments are such as that he who has them in one Church cannot by him who supposes him to have them there be at the same time supposed to want them in another Regeneration and pardon of sins and a Mystical Vnion with Christ are the designed effects of the Sacraments And it is impossible that he who has these in any one Church can be presumed to want them in another by them who presume he already has them And as no Church can think it in her power to exclude from her Communion those very Persons whom she judges regenerated and pardoned and united to Christ so if she be convinced that these benefits are validly conferred by a Presbyter in another Church she must in reason be obliged to treat them as such in her own Now whether they be validly conferred or not that she is to try by his Ministry If his Ministry be a valid Ministry his Sacraments must be valid Sacraments and actually confer the benefits designed by them to Persons not unqualified to receive them And whether his Ministry be valid or no that is whether he be indeed a Legal Representative of God so as to oblige him to ratifie what is done by himself in his name this being an act of Authority and of Authority visibly administred by men however proceeding originally from God it must be judged the same way as is usually made use of in judging concerning acts of Humane Authority that is by considering the power by which he has received it And because by communicating with the Church of which such a Presbyter is a Member and from whence himself pretends to have received his Authority she plainly acknowledges that that Church has really a power to give him that Authority he pretends to therefore the only way to satisfie her self in this matter is to examine the truth of his pretences whether he has indeed received that Authority he pretends to from those Persons from whom he pretends to have received it Which way of tryal does plainly resolve her judgment in this matter into her correspondency with his Church By that she judges whether his Authority be good and whether he have actually received it § VII 2. THEREFORE Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in which he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them For their duty of correspondence being primarily with Churches and only secondarily with particular Persons as they relate to particular Churches which is particularly true in acts of Authority which cannot be supposed in any particular Person but by derivation from some Church or which is to the same purpose from some Ecclesiastical Person whose act is to be taken for the act of the Church it must follow that the tryal of the pretences of any particular Person to Authority must be by examining his reception of it from the Church And therefore if it cannot appear that he has received any such Authority as he pretends to from that Church wherein he pretends to have received it he is to be presumed not to have it at all and therefore all that he presumes to do on supposition of it must be null and invalid § VIII 3. THE Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders For no other Church can be supposed proper to try him by because the Authority of no other Church can be presumed good antecedently to his being so All the Authority nay the very being of a Church set up by a particular Presbyter must it self depend on the Authority of the Person by whom it is set up If he be no Presbyter such a Congregation cannot be a Church in the sence we mean the word at present and therefore cannot be capable of any Ecclesiastical Authority Whence it will follow that he cannot by any act of such a Church derive Authority if he wanted it before because they can have no Authority but what he brought over to them If he brought none they have none to give him If they had any yet not such as were proper for this purpose both because it is hardly possible that it can be more notorious than that which was at least in time antecedent to it and because at least it cannot be such a Church as other Churches have held correspondence with antecedently to their correspondence with his particular Person and therefore whose Authority might have been presumed to have been granted by them on account of their correspondence with them And there will appear the less reason either that this way of tryal should be right or should be admitted by them because it is against the interests of all Government whatsoever and will justifie the practices of any seditious Person who can be so successful in his seditious practices as to gain himself the reputation of being the Head of a seditious party To be sure the party headed by him will give him all the Authority they are capable of giving him It is their interest to do so at least in the beginnings of disturbances and as it will oblige him to their interests so it will give him greater advantages for promoting those interests effectually And then what Government can think it self secure if it were so easie to justifie seditious practices How can we think that Governments should ever be favourable to Principles so pernicious to the rights of Government in general § IX NOR are these things only true concerning Churches erected by single Presbyters but concerning such also as had whole Presbyteries made up of multitudes of single Presbyters who had been over-voted in their several Presbyteries respectively Especially if they presumed to exercise their Government in the Jurisdiction of another This would also be a precedent as favourable to sedition and as destructive to Government as the other If fugitive over-voted Magistrates of several places may invade the Territories of a Third and there erect themselves into an absolute Senate independent on the Government of the place what security could there be for any Government For can we think that those same Persons who
given them that Authority If therefore Government be a thing designed by God and the ratification of this separation by God be necessary for the end of this Government I do not know what can be required further to prove that God is obliged to ratifie it The former has already been proved and the later will appear by easie inferences from it especially considering the peculiar circumstances of our Adversaries case The practicableness of any Government will require 1. A power of determining indifferent circumstances and 2. A power of obliging Subjects to stand to the judgment of Governours concerning the expediency of such determinations at least to acquiesce and submit in practice though they may otherwise think them mistaken in their judgments and 3. A power of obliging Subjects to a passive obedience even in things unlawful so long as the title to this Government is lawful And this passive obedience implies that they must not assume a power which is not committed to them in any case at all no extremity whatsoever can warrant that that for the same reason they do not abet others who are guilty of it that because the independency of Societies cannot possibly be understood within a Jurisdiction already rightfully possessed without either assuming or abetting such an Vsurpation besides the resistance that must thereby be made against the lawful Authority of the Jurisdiction therefore no opposite Societies be erected or abetted within settled Jurisdictions These are things so necessary to Government in general as that the Authority exercised in these cases must be valid if there be any Authority at all acknowledged that may properly deserve that name And therefore in these cases there can be no necessity to descend to the merit of the cause Whatever the cause be so long as it is reducible to any of these Heads the presumption lyes clear in favour of the Governours § XXIX BY this it will appear that our Brethrens separation for any of these causes is altogether unjustifiable on their part whence it will follow that if they be separated by their Superiors for any cause of this kind they are separated as well for a just cause as by a just Authority so that nothing can be wanting for making their separation valid before God And though their separation be intirely their own act without any express censures of their Superiors yet it will as effectually cut them off from the Vnity of that Church from which they separate as if they were deprived by Authority For the great design of God in joyning the Grace of the Sacraments with the external participation of the Elements being by this contrivance of things to oblige them to adhere to their Superiors without whose consent they cannot enjoy the Sacraments the reason of the thing will require that they lose those Graces as well by their own separation of themselves from their Superiors as by being separated by them The Vnity of the Church is alike prejudiced both ways and if withal we consider this right of Governours as designed by God for a preservative of Vnity nay indeed as the very bond of Vnity of a Body Politick it will then appear that a separation from visible Governours must be a direct violation of this Vnity and the rather so because it is impossible that it should not be injurious to the rights of Governours which God himself has designed for the preservation of Vnity Nay it plainly overthrows their coercive power over Malefactors by which they are enabled to preserve this Vnity For if all they can do for this purpose be only to cut them off from their Communion and they may elude this by cutting themselves off first this is an art that may be made use of by any who are objects of their Discipline and must therefore render their whole power ineffectual As therefore this visible separation does evidently cut them off from any legal notorious pretence to Vnity so by its opposing the design and means appointed by God for the preservation of Vnity it must also cut off such Separatists from all hopes of relief in point of equity For all that can be said to justifie mens claim to the equity of Gods promises when they evidently fail of performing the ordinary conditions of those promises can only be their compliance with Gods design in making those promises which could not in their circumstances be complied with by the use of the ordinary means But this cannot be pleaded in our Adversaries behalf And therefore such a separation as this must really cut off the Members so separated from Catholick Vnity and consequently the reconciliation made without the consent of the Church which had been particularly injured by the separation must be invalid and cannot expect the Divine ratification § XXX AT least upon this account the Church which would venture to reconcile them would have reason to believe that they were really disunited from the Catholick Church antecedently to her own reconciliation Whence it will follow that she cannot truly declare them united And therefore unless her act of reconciliation can reunite them whom she finds disunited it can signifie nothing for the comfort of the Persons reconciled by her But besides the reasons now-mentioned there are others sufficient to convince such a reconciliation not only of irregularity but of invalidity also both in regard of the reconciliation it self and in regard of the correspondence she is obliged to maintein In regard of the reconciliation it self because indeed it nulls it self For if she have no power to cut off she can have none to reunite them who are cut off by others And upon the same reasons by which she deprives other Churches of having a power to cut off that Member which she is pleased to receive to her Communion and to own as still united notwithstanding what has been done for cutting him off from the Vnity of his own Church she must also deny that power in her self to separate any of her own Members from her own Vnity For if on the terms now-mentioned as necessary for the preservation of Government in general his own Church has not a power to deprive him of her own Vnity she can have it in no case at all nor can any other Church have it because it is the same power that is supposed common to all particular Churches This will at least shew that they who admit of any such power of Churches to punish the misdemeanours of particular Subjects with an effectual deprivation of her own Communion cannot in reason look upon the reception as valid at least so far as it is only declarative And that it cannot be valid by way of Authority to restore to Catholick Vnity those who had been validly separated from it will appear from the other consideration of the correspondence they are obliged to maintein with all other Churches For it having appeared that by the Divine contrivance of things every particular Church is obliged to ratifie the
by any one before he could be qualifyed for judging concerning them he must in the same prudence think it the safest course to relie on the judgment of such as were skilful And when he must in pursuance of this discourse find himself obliged to trust some guide there are peculiar reasons why he should in prudence submit himself to the guidance of his Ecclesiastical Superiors rather than any others Besides the equal skilfulness of such Superiors with any others who might pretend to guide him besides the peculiar obligation of providence to direct them who as Superiors have so many presumptions in favour of them to oblige others to acquiesce in their determinations and therefore whose errors must in this regard prove of so fatal consequence to the prejudice of Multitudes of good and well-meaning Persons I say besides these things he will hereby secure himself the use of the ordinary means of Salvation which must needs be acknowledged to be a very prudent and affecting consideration to sway a doubtful practice He who were truâ—â— sensible how much he must be a loser by living out of all 〈◊〉 so as to want those ordinary Assistances to which Communicants are intitled and which a daily experience of his own frailties would make him very unwilling to want and were withal sensible how not only fruitless but mischievous it would be to gain the external Elements in an unwarrantable Communion would find that within him which would never suffer him to forfeit the external Communion of the Church but upon reasons extremely weighty and considerable As nothing under sin would be judged a sufficient reason so neither would any evidence concerning the sinfulness of a condition of Communion be judged sufficient but such as were drawn from the nature of the thing not from any contrary Humane Authority nor even any such evidence from the nature of the thing which were not of greater importance and more convictive than those which recommend the credibility of Ecclesiastical Authority Which will yet further diminish the number of the doubts of this kind Which might be supposed incident to candid though illiterate persons § XVII BUT let us suppose them advanced yet higher to be convinced by reasons intrinsick to the thing of its sinfulness and suppose we those reasons stronger than the reasons of credibility of their Ecclesiastical Superiors all that would follow even so would be that it ought not to be done for the credit of any Humane Authority that should call it lawful But may it not be sometimes done when it cannot be omitted without a greater sin Will it not in such a case cease to be a sin when both are unavoidable Undoubtedly it will if its sinfulness depend on circumstances which is the most our Adversaries can pretend concerning our conditions of Communion For from our Principles it has appeared that the sins of disobedience to Ecclesiastical Superiors and of dividing the Church or separating from it are of a higher guilt than can be pretended to be in those sinful conditions even according to them who believe the conditions sinful They will not pretend the sin of wearing a Surplice c. equal to the sin unto death to that against the Holy Ghost or those spoken of Heb. VI. or X. § XVIII BUT if the real sinfulness of such a condition be yet further supposed not to be circumstantial but in the nature of the thing absolutely considered then I confess the thing is by no means to be done not that it is at any hand lawful to avoid it by flying into a greater sin but because there is no necessity of doing either He that cannot communicate but on conditions which he believes sinful may forbear the Communion which he cannot keep but on such conditions But such forbearance would be no sin as separation would be even in such a case For still dividing of the Church disrespect to Superiors usurpation of a Sacred Power or abetting such an usurpation would be as essentially and unalterably sinful as such conditions of Communion could be pretended to be And therefore even in such a case he would continue as much obliged to avoid separation as to avoid the Communion which could not be had without such sinful compliances Nay by so much the more as the sinfulness of such a separation must be supposed greater than the sinfulness of such a Communion Which will let even the ignorant Person I am speaking of see his obligation to passive obedience where he cannot pay active to his Ecclesiastical Superiors and that this duty of his passive obedience will oblige him to forbear opposite Communions even where he cannot by any lawful compliances enjoy the lawful one This does at least reach the case of Laicks and with regard to Communions destitute of sufficient Authority for which I am at present concerned § XIX BUT besides this general suitableness of our Hypothesis for practice It is particularly considerable 2. That it is peculiarly suited to the practice of a Society of such a nature as the Church for preserving Vnity and a due respect to Authority in it For the Church as a Body Politick must always preserve a coercive power over her own Subjects And that 1. As well in persecution as prosperity For persecution was indeed the principal let she had reason to expect when her Government was first established and for which it is therefore most credible that her Government then was peculiarly fitted and therefore she must have been enabled to maintein this Authority independently on the favour of the secular Magistrate And therefore 2. She must have been enabled for this purpose without any title to the Bodies or Fortunes of her Subjects and so without any power of using coercive means of these kinds whether by employing her obedient Subjects to inflict such penalties on her disobedient ones or by moving the secular Magistrate to it Because these are things to which as she can pretend no right as a Spiritual Society so she cannot expect to have them actually in her power in such a time of persecution § XX NOW for mainteining such a coercive power in a Society under such disadvantages It is plain 1. That the Authority must be purely Spiritual and coercive only over the consciences of its Subjects It must be Spiritual because Christ has given his Officers by vertue of their being Officers of his Church no title to any temporals at all And therefore they cannot by virtue of their being his Officers have so much as a good title to dispossess their Subjects of their Lives or Fortunes It can only be over their Subjects consciences because by want of their title to externals they can have no coercive power over their Bodies And therefore what coercive power they have must be over their consciences or they can have none at all Whence it will follow that they must needs destroy all coercive power in the Church who pretend that Ecclesiastical Laws do not oblige the
ordeining others It does not follow from the Notions of those times § VII Nor from the reason of the thing § VIII IX The Principles on which these Persons proceeded in making on◠Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery did not oblige them to believe that the Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters § X XI XII XIII XIV Answ. 4. They who then held this Opinion did in all likelihood neither intend nor think of any consequence from it prejudicial to the establishments then received § XV XVI p. 491. CHAP. XXIV This supposition That the Bishops had the right of Presiding over Ecclesiastical Assemblies sufficient for our purpose § I. 1. In regard of that Power which must be granted due to him even as President This proved by these degrees 1. Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no Power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated § II. 2. No act can be presumed to be the act of that Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies § III. 3. No Assemblies can dispose of the right of such Societies but such as are Lawful ones according to the constitutions of the Societies § IV V. 4. The Indiction of the Assembly by the President is a right consequent to the Office of a President as a President and a circumstance requisite to make the Assembly it self Lawful § VI VII 5. The Bishops have always been the Presidents of Ecclesiastical Assemblies even as high as our Adversaries themselves do grant the practice of Presiding Presbyters § VIII IX This invalidates the Orders of our Adversaries § X. This was a right which no Bishops how great Assertors soever of the Identity of their Order with that of Presbyters ever did renounce or could renounce without making their Government unpracticable § XI Though the Bishops had received their Power from their Election by men yet that would not suffice to make valid any acts of the same men without their consent after their Election § XII XIII This right of Presidency might hold though the whole right of their Power had been purely Humane § XIV But supposing that right Divine all that men can do can be only to determine the Person not to confine the Power The reasoning here used will proceed though Bishops had been made by Presbyters alone without the concurrence and consecration of other Bishops § XV. The Primitive Bishops seem indeed to have been made so by Presbyters without Bishops § XVI p. 508. CHAP. XXV 2. The Nullity of the same Ordinations proved even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government from the right which Episcopal Presbyteries ought to have in giving Orders as they are considered as Presbyteries § I II. This proved by these degrees Though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is the correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination § III IV V VI. 2. Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in whith he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the Exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them § VII 3. The Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders Applied to single Presbyters § VIII To whole Presbyteries made up of over-voted single Presbyters § IX X XI 4. No Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in any particular Episcopal Church as Presbyterian without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries § XII A smaller over voted number of Presbyters cannot validly dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries § XIII XIV XV. The Power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter is a right of the Presbytery in common by the Principles of Aristocratical Government § XVI XVII XVIII XIX An Objection Answered § XX XXI XXII Another Objection Answered § XXIII XXIV Retorted § XXV The reason of the Retortion given § XXVI p. 525. CHAP. XXVI 2. The Episcopal Communion to which every one is obliged to joyn himself as he would secure the ordinary means of his own particular Salvation is the Episcopal Communion of the place wherein he lives whilest he lives in it § I. This proved against the several sorts of the Non-Conformists according to their several Principles § II. 1. As to the Presbyterians and those who acknowledg an Obligation of Government antecedently to the consent of particular Subjects And that by these degrees 1. That by the obligation of Government in general all those particulars must be obliging without which it cannot be practicable § III. 2. Many of the Presbyterians themselves do acknowledg the determination of particular circumstances and the Application of general rules to particular cases to belong to the Office of Ecclesiastical Governours § IV. 3. It is absolutely necessary for the practicableness of Government in general that every Subject know his Governour and him particularly to whom be in particular owes Obedience § V. 4. The means whereby every particular Person may be convinced to whom it is that he in particular owes Subjection must be such as may be presumed notorious to the whole Community and such whereof others may judg as well as the Person particularly concerned and by which they may judg as well concerning his Duty as their own § VI. 5. The Authority of these means must be from God § VII VIII Two Consequences inferred from hence 1. Positive That they must be under a Divine Obligation to own the Authority of these Jurisdictions whilest they live within them § IX 2. Negative That from this Divine Authority of Jurisdictions they must find themselves obliged to forbear all opposite Communions or Assemblies within those Jurisdictions § X XI XII Application made particularly to the Presbyterians § XIII 2. As to the Independents who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedently to the voluntary obligation of particular Persons § XIV XV. That there is really a Power of Government in the Church § XVI That this Power is not derived from the Multitude § XVII XVIII p. 547. CHAP. XXVII 2. That the nature of this Obligation to submit to all unsinful conditions of the Episcopal Communion is such as will make them guilty of the sin of SCHISM who will rather suffer themselves to be separated than they will submit to such conditions The Notion of SCHISM as it is only a breach of correspondence not sufficient for my purpose § I. As it is a breach of a Body Politick it is Application to our Adversaries § II. That by the Principles
is baptized is sui Juris and therefore cannot need a new contract distinct from that of his Baptism to make him a Subject of some Ecclesiastical Government § XV AND if he be a Subject to Ecclesiastical Government in general and subject to the visible Government of the Church then he must in particular be a Subject of a particular visible Government when he becomes particularly a Member of that visible Church for which those Governours are concerned either by Baptism or by cohabitation It is very true that Baptism does admit a Member into the Catholick Church because it gives him a right to be received into all other Churches distinct from that wherein he was baptized if he have occasion to remove without a new Baptism But I cannot think it does so immediately but by being admitted into a particular Church he must consequently have this title to be admitted into all other Churches by virtue of that correspondence which all are obliged to maintein with each particular in ratifying its censures and its Sacraments Which if it prove true it will then follow that the title every baptized Person has to Communion with the Catholick Church is grounded upon his being first a visible Member and consequently a visible Subject of that Church wherein he first received his Baptism Which will settle the right of Jurisdictions on as solid a foundation as they can desire who are themselves concerned for it § XVI THE main things therefore requisite to be proved in dealing with this sort of Persons are That there is really such a power of Government in the Church and that it is originally seated in the Ecclesiastical Governours antecedently to the consent of the people And these will both appear from the Principles which I have hitherto advanced that is from this supposition that the right of Government is grounded on the right of administring the Sacraments For by this it plainly appears that the Governours have a power over particular Persons because they can impose their own determinations on them under pain of exclusion from the Sacraments that is in consequence to our Principles of exclusion from the ordinary means of Salvation For this exclusion being in reason a greater mischief to the party excluded than imprisonment or banishment or even Death it self therefore it is also reasonable that it must prove as properly coercive to oblige him who values it according to its due desert to yield of his own will rather than suffer under such severities And even those temporal coercions themselves cannot prove actually coercive to him who apprehends no inconvenience in them at least not coercive whilest they are only threatned not actually inflicted which yet is the most designed coercion of threatning Laws which prove coercive to many though they be inflicted only on a few And when they are justly possessed of this power of compelling their particular Subjects by having this power of the Sacraments confined to them they need nothing more express but have the whole power of Government also given them by as necessary a consequence as he has the right of any secular Government intirely who is alone and rightfully possessed of the power of the Sword § XVII AND from the same Principles as I have managed them it also appears that the right of Government in the Ecclesiastical Governours is not derived from the Multitude I have already shewn that the original right of the Sacraments does not belong to the Multitude but to God that therefore they can have no power in this matter but what is given them expresly by God that there is no evidence of such a gift nay all the presumptions that can be against it that it was not from them but from the father that Christ received his power that he gave his Authority immediately to the Apostles and the Apostles their immediately to their Successors without depending on the suffrages of the Multitude These things will overthrow from the foundations the pretensions of the Multitude in this matter § XVIII BUT though the Multitude had originally that power which our Independent Brethren pretend they had yet it will not thence follow that they do well to take that liberty they are pleased to overthrow the obligation of the established Jurisdictions How do they prove that they could never alienate this power by their own consent through a long and peaceable Prescription that Predecessors could not oblige Successors in the alienation if it was valid that the Multitude could not oblige particular refractory Persons by their plurality of votes that if any act of the particular Persons were necessary their consent to Baptism and to become Members of the Church was not an implicite consent to subject themselves to the Government of the Church of which they became Members that their gift is not privative but accumulative and revocable at the pleasure of the particular Donors None of these things are inconsistent with the right of Democratical Government in general Nay the contrary to our Adversaries sentiments in all these matters has been believed and relied on in the practice of most of the Democratical Governments that we have ever heard of and I doubt whether our Adversaries can produce one instance like the Government they would set up in the Church out of all the Democracies and all the Histories now extant And as all these presumptions lie against them so the office of proving lies upon them as they are the Innovators from the common Doctrine of the whole Catholick Church as far as we are capable of knowing them by any certain information Nor will the proof of any one of them suffice but of all of them nor of all of them on the same degrees of evidence which might suffice for matters of inferior concernment but the evidence here should be expected proportionable to the danger and mischief which must follow on their practice in case they should prove mistaken But so far are they from proving these things with that accurateness and evidence which upon these considerations ought in reason to be expected from them as that I can hardly think that any judicious and candid Person among them would have the confidence on these terms to undertake them CHAP. XXVII That the Separation of the Non-Conformists is properly SCHISM and that from the Catholick as well as from particular Churches THE CONTENTS 2. That the nature of this Obligation to submit to all unsinful conditions of the Episcopal Communion is such as will make them guilty of the sin of SCHISM who will rather suffer themselves to be separated than they will submit to such conditions The Notion of SCHISM as it is only a breach of correspondence not sufficient for my purpose § I. As it is a breach of a Body Politick it is Application to our Adversaries § II. That by the Principles here proposed the Persons from whom they separate must be their Governours § III IV V VI VII Other things proved that are necessary