under him and gives the Keys of his Kingdom into their hands what can that possibly signifie but their Power of Government in and over the Society especially when it was so familiar a thing in Scripture to express power by Keys and our Author himself has observed it and proved it by a multitude of Instances But then says he this Power of opening and shutting the Kingdom of Heaven is exercised by preaching the Doctrine of the Gospel by administring the Sacraments by admitting fit Persons into it by Baptism and by not admitting such as are unfit and by retaining such as are already admitted That is to say our Author will allow the Governors of the Church all other Acts of Jurisdiction but only this one of Excommunication notwithstanding that it is evidently implyed in them all Thus if the Governours of the Church be entrusted with a Power of Judging what Persons are fit to be admitted then certainly if they perform not those conditions upon which alone they are admitted it must be in the Power of those who let them in to turn them out So plainly does the Power of Baptism infer that of Excommunication and the Power of judging who are fit members of the Church infer both So that the Gentlemen of the Erastian persuasion would have been much more consistent with themselves when they would not give the Church all the Acts of Power if they would have given it none at all for they are inseparable And therefore the learned and pious Mr. Thorndike has very judiciously observed that the Leviathan has done like a Philosopher in making the question general that is general indeed though by so freely and generously declaring himself he has made his Resolution more subject to be contradicted But yet they that only dispute the Power of Excommunication as they are of the same opinion so are they pressed with greater difficulty only they express not so much of their meaning for they are nevertheless to give an account what Right the secular Power can have to appoint the Persons that shall either determine or execute matters of Religion to decide controversies of Faith to administer the Sacraments than if they resolved and maintain'd all this as expresly as the Leviathan hath done And in the same manner does the following Text explain it self If he hear not the Church let him be to thee as an Heathen and a Publican if we will observe upon what subject our Saviour was then discoursing for though our Author to make the matter appear the more ambiguous has given us a large Critical account of the words that signifie Church in all Languages if instead of that he had only minded our Saviour's Discourse he must have seen that by the Church here could be understood nothing but the Christian Church this being one of the Laws whereby he would have the Subjects of his Kingdom to be govern'd But our Author tells us that the Notion of the Christian Church was not then understood it being a thing to come and it is not likely that our Saviour in a matter of familiar and daily use should direct them to such a means as no mortal man could possibly understand To which it is very easie to answer that all our Saviour's Discourses procede upon the supposition of the being of his Church He began at preaching the Kingdom of Heaven and all his Sermons and Instructions after that are but so many Laws and Institutions for its Government and therefore our Saviour's Words are so far from being doubtful or obscure that they were not capable of being applied to any other Society than that which he was now establishing in the World And whatsoever was the vulgar meaning of the word Ecclesia yet when used by our Saviour it can be applied to no other company of men but that of his Church and it was so far from being then a new word or a new notion to the Apostles that our Saviour had sometime before used the same Expression to St. Peter Upon this Rock I will build my Church which he promised him as a peculiar reward of his forward Faith Now it cannot be supposed that our Saviour would make his promises to his Friends and Servants in unintelligible Language and therefore it must be supposed that the Notion of the Christian Church was an intelligible thing But if this will not do our Author proceeds that this Text gives no jurisdiction to the Church but only directs private Christians how they shall behave themselves toward Offenders as if the Emperour should have made an Edict that if any Subject should not submit to the decree of his Prefect he should be accounted by his fellow Subjects as no member of the Common-wealth this gives the Prefect no new Power but only concerns the opinion of the People Very true but it supposes his old Power and so if our Saviour had antecedently vested his Church with this Power this was no new grant but only a supposition of a former one if he had not then this was their Patent when he refers his Subjects to their Judicature But whatever may be the Notion of the Church what is there says our Author in the following words Let him be to thee as an Heathen and a Publican that sounds like Excommunication either in the Jewish or Christian use of it Nothing at all in the Jewish for Heathens were never Excommunicate as having never been of the Society neither were Publicans put out of the Synagogue upon the account of their being Publicans But though Heathens were not Excommunicate Persons yet Excommunicate Persons were as Heathens and that is so plainly the meaning of the words that nothing but meer peevishness could have made the exception and it is the same as if our Saviour should have said of an Apostate let him be unto thee as an Infidel and our Author should have replied upon him How can that be When an Infidel is one that was never a Member of the Church and an Apostate once was And then as for the Publicans though they durst not at that time Excommunicate them for that reason for fear of the Romans yet it is notorious that they thought them worthy of it and that they were esteem'd as no better than scandalous Sinners Heathens and Idolaters But this supposed too it is no act says he of the Church but every private man who was hereby permitted to treat the Offender as a vile Person But this act of his supposes the power of Judicature in the Church for this advice relates to the known power of the Sanhedrin that were wont to Excommunicate refractory Offenders and thereby to put them into the state of Heathen Men And such it seems was to be the Authority of the Apostles who were the great Sanhedrin in the Christian Church as appears by the plain design of our Saviour's discourse when he refers all Christians to their Judicature and commands them that if any man be
whatever first engaged him to undertake the Argument and it is usually reported that the Provocation was so very slight that I cannot but think it beneath the Spirit of so great a man he has prosecuted it with greater Zeal and Keenness than he expresses in other Writings Nay he cannot forbear upon all occasions digressing into this Subject insomuch that this is the main matter of his Preface to his Book de Anno Civili the Subject whereof one would think is remote enough from this Argument And yet after all his expence of Pains and Learning he has been so far from serving the purpose of his Design that he has directly opposed it And if he had only studied to furnish the Church with Arguments to justifie her Authority and Jurisdiction he could not have done her more service than he has done by this violent Attempt upon it This I know cannot but seem a very strange Charge against a Person of his Parts and Learning but therein I say appears the strength of Prejudice and Partiality that it puts men beside the use of their Natural Understandings and hires them to set their Wits on work only to serve a Cause or gratifie a Passion And when once a man has taken up a Falshood to defend the more Skill and Learning he spends upon it the worse it is for when an Errour is but slightly maintain'd the mistake may proceed from Inadvertency but when it is asserted with great Industry and long Study that discovers the man to be under a setled and habitual misunderstanding And when all is done every thing will be True or False as it is whether we will or no. And if the Power of the Church be setled upon Divine Right 't is not all the Wit nor all the Eloquence nor all the Learning in the World that can unsettle it the Winds may blow and the Waves may beat but they can never shake it because it is founded upon a Rock For a proof hereof I shall first give a brief Account of this learned Authors method of Discourse and then secondly in the same way of arguing by which he endeavours to destroy the Original power of the Church I shall undertake to make out a demonstrative proof of its Divine Authority Only I must premise that whereas he treats only of the Power of Excommunication that Dispute must involve in it all other Acts of Government in that they are all supposed by the Power of inflicting Punishment Now Mr. Seldens Account of the rise of Excommunication is briefly this that it was never establisht in the Jewish Church by any Divine Command that there was no use of it whilst they enjoyed the Civil Power among themselves and therefore that we meet with no Footsteps of it till after the Babylonian Captivity and that then and there it was first taken up among the Jews by Confederacy and mutual Compact For being then deprived of all judicial Power and zealous for the honour of their Nation they covenanted among themselves to punish all contumacious Offenders against their Laws and Customs by Excommunication Which consisted of two things First solemn Imprecation of the Divine vengeance Secondly Separation from their Converse that partly by the fear of the Wrath of God and partly by shame and modesty they might be brought to Repentance which as it was no proper Jurisdiction so it could take no effect not only against the will of the Sovereign Power but of every refractory Offender that might if he pleased despise their Sentence and in spite of it enjoy the liberty of his own Conversation And therefore to make the Sentence appear more terrible to the People they expressed it in the same forms of Speech in which Moses expressed Capital punishments which is the thing that gave the Occasion to learned men of mistaking as if the same Phrases had signified the same thing from the beginning though the only intention of the Jews was thereby to declare that they would no more own Excommunicate persons to be Members of their Society than if they had been cut off from it by a sentence of Death and that if it were in their Power they would not spare to do it according to the Law of Moses That this sentence related only to their Civil Liberties and was no abridgment of their freedom as to publick Worship and though the Offender upon whom it passed was said to be cast out of their Synagogue yet that is to be understood as it was their Court of Judicature not their place of Worship and so signifies Civil Out-lawry not Ecclesiastical Excommunication But though this Device was at first made use of in this case of necessity for want of more effectual Government yet having once obtained the Power of custom among them when they were restored to their Country and Civil State they reserved it among their Civil Penalties and used or omitted alter'd or abated its Exercise according to discretion as is wont to be done in all other Acts of humane Judicature That this was the State and Notion of the thing in the time of our Saviour and his Apostles who took it up in imitation of the Jews and therefore expressed it by the same forms of Speech so that in their Discourses it signified no other Separation than what it did among the Jews That thus the Use of it continued till the open breach between the Jews and Christians and then the Christian Church being wholly separated from the Jewish into a Society by it self they enter'd into such a Confederacy among themselves as the Jews did in the time of their Captivity of inflicting censures upon such as by their unchristian Practices should bring scandal upon the Church That this Power at first resided in the whole Congregation not in any particular Officer and that thus it continued till the Ambition of the Bishops wrested it into their own hands and for it pretended the Authority of our Saviour's Commission And so they enjoyed it till the time of Constantine the Great who taking the Church into his Care and Government reassumed this Power to himself as a natural Right of the Sovereign Prerogative and so it descended to all his Successors in the Empire who as appears by the Records of every Age varied its Use and exercise at their own pleasure And as Princes came into the Church this Right of course Escheated to them and was accordingly challenged by them as is largely proved by the History of Europe and particularly of our own Nation This is the short Account of his long Performance the sum whereof is That Excommunication had no Divine but meerly an humane Original and that it is no Ecclesiastical but a civil Punishment and therefore that it appertains not to the Church but to the civil Magistrate Now to Answer or rather Confute all this I need only to represent That the Christian Church is a Society founded upon the immediate Charter and Command of our Saviour
the opposition of the times the worse they are the more they require our zeal to oppose and to reform them And it is never more seasonable to assert the Rights of the Christian Church than when they are most disowned Let us but do our duty and God will do his work and let us not betake our selves to tricks and shifts upon any pretences if any such there are of loss or danger the Church of Christ subsists upon no other Politicks than Courage and Integrity Let us then be true to those two fundamental Principles of Christianity and our Saviour has undertaken for the event that the Gates of Hell much less Rome or Geneva shall never be able to prevail against it POSTSCRIPT I Have thus far adventured to state the Case of the Protestant Religion as it is established by Law in the Church of England Thereby to declare what it is that we contend for in our Disputes against all sorts of Recusants and Dissenters For it is not at all material what we oppose but what we assert and there would be no harm in Errour were it not for its Contrariety to Truth So that before we defend the Church of England it is necessary to define the true state of its cause otherwise we contend about we know not what For as for the general Term of Protestancy it is an indefinite thing so that if all the men in England that are Enemies or no Friends to the Pope of Rome may be listed under that name we have some Protestants that believe there is a God and some that believe there is none some that believe they have a Saviour and a Soul to save and some that laugh at both there are Hobbian Protestants Muggletonian Protestants Socinian Protestants Quaker Protestants Rebel Protestants Protestants of 41 and Protestants of 48. All or most of which are as different as Popery it self from the true Protestancy of the Church of England And therefore it is necessary to stick close to that both as it is established by the Law of the Land and by the Law of Christ. For unless we limit it to the Law of the Land we may in time have a Church consisting of nothing but Protestants dissenting from the established Religion that is a Church not only without but against it self And unless we derive the Authority of that Religion that is by Law established from the antecedent Law of Christ we may quickly be as we are in a fair way to be a Reformed Church of Protestant Atheists that is a Church without Religion And therefore all must be built upon this one Boâ—â—om that the Church owned by the Law of England is the very same that was established by the Law of Christ. For unless we suppose that the Church was originally setled by our Saviour with divine Authority we deny his Supremacy over his own Church and unless we suppose that the supreme Government of the Kingdom has power to abett and ratifie our Saviours establishment by Civil Laws we deny his Majesties Supremacy over his Christian Subjects and therefore both together must be taken in to the right State and Constitution of the Church of England And that do what we can will involve the Leaders of our present Separation in the guilt both of Schism and Sedition of Schism in the Church in that they withdraw themselves and their obedience from those who are vested with a power to command them by vertue of a Divine Commission of Sedition in the State in that they needlesly and without any justifiable pretence violate the Laws of the Common-wealth Though the truth is their Dissension is somewhat worse For as they manage it it is not only Sedition but Rebellion in that they do not only disobey the Laws but disavow their obligation standing resolutely upon that one Principle that no Magistrate whatsoever has any power of establishing any thing relating to the Worship of God So that the Act of Uniformity is not so much faulty for the particular matters contained in it as for the unlawful and usurped Authority of it And when the King and Parliament enjoyned the Book of Common-Prayer to be used in all Churches they challenged a Power to which they had no right and invaded the Prerogative of God himself This is the first ground of the Separation as it is stated by the chief Ring-leaders of it and it is a plain renunciation of their Allegiance as well as Conformity I can with all the streinings of Charity make no better of it and should be heartily glad if I could see them without shufling and prevarication clear themselves of so pernicious a Principle To conclude methinks Religion has been long enough trifled with in this Kingdom and after so long and so sad experience of our folly it is time to return to some sense of discretion and sobriety Before the late barbarous War we had the Scepter of Jesus Christ and the divine right of Presbytery to advance but now after the murder of an hundred thousand men that Cause has proved so ridiculous as that it is grown ashamed of it self However the pretence was great and solemn but at this time the People are driven into the same excesses against the Church no body knows for what unless it be that some men among us are too proud or too peevish to recant their Follies And therefore I conjure them in the name of God to lay their hands upon their hearts and without passion seriously to consider what it is for which they renounce the Church in which they were baptised into the Communion of the Catholick Church tear and rend it into numberless pieces and factions scare multitudes of silly and well-meaning People out of it as they tender the salvation of their souls and put the whole Kingdom into perpetual tumults and combustions about Religion and when they have considered it I shall only bind it upon their Consciences so to answer it to themselves now as they hope to answer it to their Saviour at the last day As for the foreign Reformed Churches I have said nothing of them because they are altogether out of the compass of my Argument which is confined within the four Seas and concerns only those that either are or ought to be members of the Church of England But if in any thing any other Churches deviate from the Primitive Institution they must stand and fall to their own Master And God forbid we should be so uncharitable as to go about to un-church them or renounce brotherly communion with them or to think that our blessed Saviour should withdraw the promise of his Grace and Protection from them For if every defect from his Institution should forfeit the Rights of a Christian Church there never was as we may find by the Apostles account of the Churches in their times nor ever will be such a thing as a Church in the world For in this life it is not to be expected that any thing