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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
or excusable to prosecute their differences so far as to divide the Church for them And if the Persons concerned would be pleased to consider further what all wise men that are any thing conversant in Controversies will acknowledg from their own Experience that it is in all Questions much more easie to Object than to establish any thing Positive that especially matters of Practice are only capable of high Probabilities or Morally Certain Presumptions which not amounting to a proof a priori may therefore be conceived very consistent with the unaccountableness of many Phaenomena so that if we were never to presume any thing true in order to Practice till we were able to give a Positive account of all Objections against it much the greater part of Mans Life must be spent in a Pyrrhonick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that seeing this is so and that it must be therefore Prudent to proceed to Practice in many Cases wherein we cannot Answer contrary Objections therefore it must be the wisest course to rule our Selves by Positive consistent Notions fitted for the Difficulties on both sides rather than by particular Objections § X WHICH if our Dissenting Brethren would observe and would therefore consider the Interest of the Church in a due respect to be paid to Governours in order to the establishment of a Just and solid Peace as well as in preserving the Liberty of private Christians and preventing Tyrannical Impositions and would therefore be so wary in their Arguments for the latter as that they may not prejudice the former but would therefore first think of a Prudent Mean which might avoid both Extremes and reconcile both Objections and then be wary that the Arguments insisted on might prove no more than what they ought to do consequently to such an Hypothesis if I say they would seriously consider these things this would prove both a more Prudent Expedient for finding out the Truth than that which is usually observed by them and I verily believe would in the Event discover to them the Fallacies of many of their Arguments § XI IT would better help them to find the Truth for they would thus be forewarned how much their Arguments must prove and therefore which if they exceed they may justly be presumed Fallacious though their particular Fallacy be not as yet discovered which must needs be of excellent use in affairs of Practice Thus they who admit of the Churches being a Body Politick and subject to a Government properly so called and yet withal hold the unlawfulness of some Impositions on Subjects must Consequently be assured that all those Arguments in favour of the Liberty of the Subject which either encroach on the Rights of Government in general or render the Government of that particular Society unpracticable in such Circumstances with which all humane Government is to be considered or overthrow the Moral possibility of Catholick Peace on the one side and those which so favour the Governours of the Church as to make all their Impositions obliging even in those Instances wherein their Subjects have a Right to Liberty on the other they must I say proceeding on these Principles be assured that both these sorts of Arguments how plausible soever they may seem yet are really Fallacious § XII IT would also discover to them the fallaciousness of their own Arguments For let this Principle only be taken for granted that all Arguments pleading for the Liberty of Subjects from Ecclesiastical Impositions so that by an unavoidable Parity of Consequence they overthrow the Moral possibility of Catholick Peace conclude too much and therefore indeed conclude nothing at all and it will then concern them to beware that their own Arguments be not chargeable with this Fallaciousness § XIII BUT because Men are extreamly partial in Judging concerning a Cause which they have already espoused therefore it would be much more equal to represent their own Case in others Persons before they pass their Censure concerning it I take it therefore for granted that God hath established Catholick Vnity on such Terms as are not likely to fail frequently and perpetually among Pious well-disposed Persons nay not at all perpetually This I do not therefore take for granted because I think it difficult to be proved but because I conceive its proof easie and unnecessary This therefore being supposed it will follow that if by the general Principles of our Non-Conforming Brethren many and perpetual Divisions must in all Probability happen even among Pious well-disposed Persons the Preservation of Catholick Peace is on these Principles Morally impossible and therefore that the Principles themselves are certainly Fallacious § XIV AND that our Dissenting Brethren themselves may understand this I shall intreat them to consider Whether upon the same Principles by which they excuse their Separation from us and their Erecting opposite Communions which is the way to perpetuate their Separation they have not given other Pious Persons an Apology by themselves unanswerable to separate also from themselves whom yet they will undoubtedly blame for doing so Which will consequently oblige them when this is proved true to acknowledg the Fallaciousness of their own Arguments For what can be pretended in defence of their Separation from Vs that may not be pleaded by others against themselves for Justifying eternal Subdivisions of their own Congregations into inconsiderable Fractions § XV IS it the moment of the things But they are as little momentous as is possible even such as themselves confess to be only Circumstantials of Religion and in their own Nature perfectly Indifferent It were easie here to retort the Arguments themselves make use of to perswade our Governours to yield them For can they pretend that they are Indifferent to be yielded by Governours in condescention to their weaker Subjects And can they at the same time think them not Equally Indifferent for Subjects to be complyed with in Submission to their Governours Or can any Cause be thought too frivolous and inconsiderable for Justifying a Separation when such as these are thought sufficient for it § XVI OR is it the Imposition of such things that is thought so very grievous though the things themselves were as Calvin was pleased to call them tolerable Follies Indeed this might rationally be urged to perswade Governours to forbear the interposition of their Authority in such Cases where there were so little need to interess it But that it self were only rational when Governours were also perswaded of their needlesness But when it is further urged as it is by them to Justifie the Separation of Subjects in such Cases wherein Governours cannot be convinced of their needlesness how can they Answer such as on the same Terms should be desirous to separate from themselves For if this be so Governours must never expect to be obeyed but in such Cases wherein Subjects are equally convinced with themselves of the particular Necessity of their Impositions Which must make Government perfectly useless and must necessarily
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
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
of a popular party § II THIS is not allowed in any Societies of the like nature Though the Aldermen of Corporations have a power together with the Mayors to dispose of the Offices belonging to their respective Corporations yet if the whole Table shall meet by themselves in separation from the Mayor and in opposition to him however they might over-vote him if he had been present and their assembly lawful yet what they should do in the Case we are now supposing would be a perfect Nullity and unobliging to the Corporation But if any single Alderman should separate from all his Brethren also and should of himself undertake to dispose of the things or Offices of the Corporation could any of our Brethren themselves approve them in it Could they think the Offices so disposed of by them validly disposed of Could they think the Corporation obliged to ratifie them And yet it is strange that they should not see how like this Case is to that of their own Predecessors The first Ministers they had ordeined in the separation were ordeined by such Presbyters as these and by such an act as this now mentioned And their whole Succession since that time has been mainteined generally on no better a Title This representation of their case may possibly affect some popular capacities better than the naked reasons But that the more judicious among them may see that my desire it to deal fairly and candidly with them and not to represent their cause more invidiously than it deserves or to take any advantage that may be taken from a false representation of it I shall endeavour to reduce the reason to a more close way of management under the following considerations which I shall intreat our Adversaries to consider impartially § III 1. THAT 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 By his being a Presbyter in the Catholick Church when he is once made I do not mean that he may canonically exercise his Power in all particular Churches where he may have occasion to come without dependence on the respective Governours but that the exercise of his power in his own Church is to be ratified over the whole Catholick Church in general that they are to suppose the Sacraments administred by him to be validly administred and that therefore they are not to rebaptize Persons baptized by him when they come to live among them nor to refuse their Communion to such to whom he thinks fit to give it nor to receive to their Communion those who are excluded from his and that they are also so far to ratifie the Authority received in his own Church from those who had power to give it him as that if they think fit to permit him to exercise his power within their Jurisdiction they do it without pretending to give him a new Authority but only a new Licence and that where-ever he can exercise his Authority without Canonical injury as in Heathenish or Heretical Countries where no Canons do oblige ratifie all his acts of power the same way as if he had performed them within his own Canonical Jurisdiction This is more than is observed in civil Societies One Country is not bound to confirm the censures of another they are neither obliged to banish their exiles nor to receive their Countrimen to the same priviledges among themselves which they enjoyed in their own Country nor to receive their Magistrates to exercise power among themselves without a new Commission which may give them a new power which the Authority of their own Country was not able to give them § IV AND the reason why I level my discourse against the power that the Presbyters of our Adversaries may pretend to on account of their being Presbyters of the Catholick Church is because this is the only pretence that they can plausibly make for the validity of what they do Canonical Licence they cannot so much as pretend to for exercising their power within the Jurisdictions of others without their leave And it has already appeared that they can make out no Succession from the Apostles but what must originally have come from Episcopal Ordination That therefore they should expect that the exercise of a power received from the Bishops yet exercised within their Jurisdiction without the Licence of the Bishops nay contrary to their express prohibition should be counted valid how unlawful soever must be from the irrevocableness of the Authority at first received by them and the unconfinedness of the design of that power antecedently to those Canons by which it was afterwards made irregular in its practice Were it not for the nature of the unconfinedness of this power they could not pretend to any right to exercise it out of the Jurisdiction of him who gave it them nor even within that Jurisdiction without his leave And therefore if this will not do it they can have nothing that can defend their Vsurpations from being invalid as well as uncanonical § V AND that this correspondence of the Catholick Church with that particular one in which he was ordeined is the true reason why all other Churches are obliged to ratifie the acts of every particular Presbyter will appear if it be considered that by his Ordination in his own particular Church he can have no Jurisdiction given him over any other which is not under the Jurisdiction of that particular Church from which he has received his Orders And therefore the reason why they are obliged to confirm his censures cannot be any Authoritative deference they owe to him such as Subjects owe to even their fallible Superiors even in matters wherein they think them actually mistaken yet so to practise as if they thought them not mistaken but purely their own actual conviction concerning the reasonableness of the thing it self because they either know or presume it to be fit that his censure should be confirmed But this reason of the thing would not hold were it not that his Church and theirs are in those things the same and as they give the same advantages so they require the same qualifications which whoever is presumed to have in one cannot by them by whom he is presumed to have them be at the same time presumed to want them in the other In other Societies where the priviledges conferred are proper to the Society the qualifications are so too And therefore though one Society be really satisfied that a Subject has deserved well of another and that he has deservedly received his reward for his eminent deserts from that Authority which had power to give him it and therefore that he has a just title to a reward yet are they not obliged in any reason to give him the same honour in their own For the nature of these Societies are so little
had behaved themselves seditiously in their single capacities would not do so also when they were united and when their common interest still obliged them to do so when they might thereby so much better their disadvantages in their respective Presbyteries It is the humour of such Persons to unite against a common Adversary at least for a time how seditious soever they might be otherwise And certainly they might expect better condescensions from Persons as criminal as themselves who had themselves also many unreasonable things to be born with than from their more innocent equals who had Justice on their side much more than from their Superiors And what could any Ecclesiastical censures signifie if they who had been ejected singly might be thus allowed to confederate themselves into a Communion and a Presbytery independent on those from which they had been ejected Who would value Excommunication or Deprivation when they might so easily restore themselves into a condition as good as that from which they had been ejected and might at the same time so easily revenge themselves on those by whom they had been ejected by setting up another Government within their Jurisdiction whose acts must also be accounted as valid as their own These things shew that such a precedent of Presbyteries erected out of Persons over-voted in their particular Presbyteries would be injurious to the common interest of Government in general though the form were every where Presbyterian as well as to those particular Governours by whom they had been ejected and to those in whose Jurisdiction they were assembled And its being against the common interest of Government is as has been observed a great presumption that it is against Justice also § X BUT besides this presumption the same reasons of exception lye against the Justice of such a Presbytery as against the acts of single Presbyters I mention not the Canons that forbid all Churches to receive the Excommunicates of each other that put Communicants with them into the same condition with the Excommunicates themselves that deprive them all of the Communion of all those Churches who maintein a correspondence with each other in the observation of those Canons I mention not that common interest which at first induced the Governours of particular Churches to agree upon those Canons and obliges all even those that never received nor heard of those Canons yet to be determined by them in their practice on the same account as all even the most barbarous Nations are obliged by the Law of Nations though never explicitely received by them because these are as necessary for the common interest and correspondence of Ecclesiastical as the other are for those of Civil Societies Which consideration must extend the ratification of the censures of particular Churches to the Catholick Church as the Law of Nations is common to all Nations so that the Excommunicates of every particular Church must be so to the Catholick Church also And then sure it will be hard to understand how they who are de Jure out of the communion of all Churches can yet be in the Catholick Church or how they who have no right to be members of any Church can by their meeting together become a Church and become capable of Ecclesiastical Authority Which reason will in the consequence of it reach Schismaticks as well as Hereticks how little soever it be observed by our Brethren who are very little used to take in the rational rights of Government in general in their disputes concerning the Government of the Church § XI BUT besides the same reasons invalidate the acts of these Presbyteries which were urged against the acts of single Presbyters among them Whatever may be thought of such a Multitude of over-voted Presbyters in a Heathen Country where the right were primi occupantis yet where a Government is already possessed their encroaching on that must be as invalid as if they should take upon them to dispose of the goods of such Persons as were in actual possession whatever might be thought of what conveyances they might also make of goods that were under no propriety And the reason of these two cases is so exactly the same as the conveyances of power must in such a case be as invalid as the conveyance of property Besides according to the nature of Government which admits of no competition within its own Jurisdiction strangers how numerous soever immediately become Subjects by living in the Jurisdiction of another whatever they be in their own and that with this disadvantage also beyond the natural Subjects of the place that they can have no interest in so much of the Government as the Natives of the place may pretend to where the Government is Democratical And the acts of such Subjects how numerous soever must be invalid in matters of Government Now in this I believe our Adversaries will find themselves deeply concerned They who pretend to the most regular Ordination of them since the defection who were not immediately ordeined by Bishops can only say that the Presbyters by whom they were ordeined had received Episcopal Ordination and that they were ordeined by a full Presbytery of such Presbyters not of the greater part of the settled Presbytery of the place where they were ordeined or of any other but only of a Multitude of particular Presbyters from several parts who were over-voted in their several respective Presbyteries I believe they cannot give an instance in any place where the greater part of a settled Presbytery revolted from the Bishops to them I am sure they cannot justifie their ordinary successions by such Ordinations § XII AND 4. As the order of Presbytery which would be allowed in the Catholick Church must first appear to have been validly received in some particular Church and that particular Church must on the Principles now mentioned be some Episcopal Church as Presbyterian so no Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in such a Church without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries Let none be surprized at my speaking of an Episcopal Church as Presbyterian I do it only that I may in dealing with our Adversaries accommodate my self to their Notions It is therefore certain that in the Ordination of Presbyters after the Episcopal way the Bishop does not lay on his own hands alone but has the assistance of several other Presbyters who are present to lay on their hands together with him On this account it is that several of our Adversaries who are sensible of their obligation in interest to do it do justifie the validity of those Orders they have received by Episcopal Ordination They consider the whole act only as the act of an Episcopal Presbytery and consider the Bishop himself in that act only as an ordinary Presbyter who cannot lose the power he has as a common Presbyter by being made a President of the whole Presbytery Yet in that act they consider him only as an ordinary Presbyter because they think it would
belong to him as a Presbyter though he were not also a President of the Presbytery and therefore cannot take it for a Prerogative of his Office as President That it is therefore from some such a Presbytery as this that they must derive the validity of their Orders appears from the Principles already premised that no other Presbyteries can make out their Succession from the Apostles that particular Members of even these Presbyteries cannot do it alone in a separation from them that Multitudes of such particular Persons though meeting together cannot make up such a Church among them as were requisite to attest the Orders of Persons ordeined to the rest of the Catholick Church who maintein correspondence with them § XIII CONSIDERING therefore these Episcopal Presbyteries only as Presbyters and the Bishop himself as acting herein by no higher a power than that of an ordinary Presbyter yet even so no Orders can be valid but those which were conferred by the prevailing vote of even such a Presbytery at least those are invalid which are given by the votes of a smaller over voted part of them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government though it were doubtful whether the greater part might dispose a right common to them all without the consent of every particular yet it hardly can be doubtful whether a smaller part can dispose of such a common right though over-voted by a greater number of suffrages than their own Though it may be thought reasonable that some reserved cases of that nature wherein the whole Society were deeply concernâ—d should not pass without the unanimous suffrages of every individual Member yet as there is no Justice antecedently to compacts that any individuals should dispose of the rights of others though less considerable than themselves till by the general acts and compacts of all whereby Polyarchical Societies are most naturally settled such general rules are agreed on by which some particular Members may for peaces sake be allowed to dispose of the common rights of their Fellow-members without their express consent in the particular but by vertue of their general consent once given to such general rules so neither is there any reason in prudence that where unanimous consent cannot be had and it is therefore necessary that one part yield to the other the greater should be swayed by the smaller part The fundamental rule of all this publick justice is that where there is a necessity of a choice the publick be preferred before private interests that therefore it is very just to bear with injuries to private Persons when they cannot be avoided without injuries to the publick Which will in generosity oblige a smaller part to yield to a greater but can on no terms oblige the greater to yield to the smaller because indeed the interest of the greater part is more the publick interest than that of the smaller § XIV BESIDES the reason of all compacts of this kind of referring their differences to a publick decision is the presumed equality of the decision above what would be among the interessed Persons themselves and the power to execute what is resolved on beyond the resistance of those against whom the cause is decided And therefore if we should again suppose men free as they were before these compacts I am speaking of we have reason to presume that they would settle this power of deciding their differences in such hands where there might be presumed less danger of corruption and where there were the greatest power to execute their own decrees And both these reasons give the preference to these major votes above the smaller part It is to be presumed that it is not so easie to corrupt a greater as it is to corrupt a smaller part And when it is necessary that the decree be executed the power of the greater is greater than that of the smaller part where the particular Subjects of power are supposed equal as they are in our present case And though it be very possible in after cases that it may so fall out that the greatest right may sometimes belong to that side where there is the smallest power yet we have reason to believe that the only reason why it comes to be so is the unexpectedness of revolutions to which humane affairs are obnoxious which could not be so much as probably foreseen when the rules of such Societies were first agreed on Otherwise it is reasonable to presume that at the first constitution of those rules they would chuse the greatest power and interest for the fittest seat of Authority because they would by that be best secured of the execution of the Sentences given by them And therefore where we may presume the greater power lay at the passing of those compacts and where they who made those compacts had reason to see the greatest power would always be there we have also reason to presume that they would intend to place the greatest Authority § XV AND this is a reason which might in all probability induce them to resolve that the major vote should prevail through all succeeding generations because the major vote in the case I am speaking of must inseparably carry with it the greatest power And this is a reason that alike concerns all by whom the Government were at first settled whether it were by compacts of the Parties themselves who were to be governed or whether the Government were placed over them by a power who had a Jurisdiction over them antecedently to their own consent There is the same reason why such a power should decree that the smaller number of suffrages in opposition to a greater number should be null in Societies to be established by him as that the Parties themselves should at first agree that it should be so The reasons now mentioned proceed alike in both cases Which I therefore observe that our Adversaries may perceive that as to the case of which I am now speaking it will come to the same event whether the power of the Presbyteries do come from the consent of the particular Presbyters or whether it proceed immediately from the Divine institution Still it is to be presumed that things are to be decided by the vote of the greater part where nothing is otherwise expresly determined because this way of determination is so certainly for the publick interest for which we have as much reason to presume that God would be solicitous as that the Presbyters themselves would be so § XVI BY this it appears even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government how invalid as well as how irregular it must be for a smaller over-voted number of the Presbyters to undertake to dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries whether as acting by themselves or as acting in Presbyteries made up of multitudes of such Presbyters as had been severally over-voted in the Presbyteries to which each of them did at first belong Now that the power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter
are long since discontinued and were not observed in the case of those Princes to whom St. Paul notwithstanding advised the Christians of his time to be subject in regard of Conscience Rom. xiii 5 Yet those Emperors of the Julian Family were thought Vsurpers in that Age and had no more to excuse them from being so besides their Prescription for the time they had been peaceably possessed of the honours enjoyed by them and their not having any visible just competitors And particularly concerning Nero in whose time St. Paul is thought to have written that Epistle it is very well known by what wicked Arts of his Mother Agrippina he got the Empire Yet when he was free from a more just Competitor Britannicus this did not hinder his Authority from being from God nor resistance to him from being a resistance of the Ordinance of God and in that regard from deserving damnation Rom. xiii 1 2. And this must needs be the case where-ever God himself does not immediately reveal himself nor the Persons Authorized by him perform their credentials in the presence of the Persons obliged to believe them They must then assure themselves of the truth of these things only by Humane Testimony Yet because when they are once assured of these matters of Fact which they cannot be assured of but by Humane Testimonies it will then follow that the Revelations are from God therefore the obligation to believe these Revelations is supposed to be so too and the punishment of disbelief is thereupon proportioned to the disbelief not of a Humane but a Divine Authority And therefore this may also be the obligation to submit to the Authority of Jurisdictions notwithstanding that their certain bounds were prefixed by a Humane Authority § IX NOW from this Divine right of Jurisdictions two consequences will follow which it will seriously concern our Adversaries to consider impartially The first is positive That they must be under a Divine Obligation to own the Authority of these Jurisdictions whilest they live within them I do not mean that they are obliged never to go out of them or that when they are out of them they are obliged to their local constitutions any more than any are obliged to live for ever in their Native Kingdom or to observe the Laws of it when they are in Countries of Constitutions different from it but only that they are the same way obliged by God to acknowledg and submit to the Jurisdiction whilest they live in it on the same account as they who believe the Divine Authority of the Secular Government bâ—lieve all the Subjects obliged to submit to the Laws of their Country whilest they live in it as they will answer it to God Now that which will follow from this positive obligation is that they do embrace the Communion and submit to all the unsinful impositions of it that is all which are unsinful to the submitters whatever they be to the imposers and lay out their endeavours to secure the peace of it and to prevent the disturbances of others as they would think themselves obliged to do in the Secular Societies to which they are respectively related Without these things they can no more be supposed to own the Ecclesiastical Authority than they could the Civil if they would wilfully abstein from their Priviledges in it and refuse obedience to its Laws or countenance others in their disobedience to them § X THE Second consequence is Negative that from this Divine Authority of Jurisdictions they must find themselves obliged to forbear all opposite Communions or Assemblies within those Jurisdictions This seems so evident of it self as that I do not know whether any will doubt of it but in such cases wherein evident interest makes them justly suspicious of being partial None doubts but that other Authorities independent on the Supreme in secular Societies do manifestly ruin the Authority and security of such Societies and that he who secretly countenances such independent Authorities cannot at the same time be taken for a good Subject and well affected to the visible Government of his Society but much more if he should do it openly They would in all likelihood think so if themselves were concerned for the Government of it They would not think such Persons well affected to them would deal with them as they do with their Superiors If the power of their Jurisdictions be from God then plainly it is an invasion of their right for others to arrogate or exercise power in their Jurisdictions without their leave It is so even for Persons who have really power in other Jurisdictions but much more for them who never had any power given them much more for their own Subjects who by the common rules of subjection in all Societies of this nature are obliged to duty within their particular districts This must be a double Sacriledg not only as the right of the Jurisdiction it self is on these Principles supposed to be sacred and consequently such as cannot be usurped by any how sacred soever themselves be without Sacriledg but also because the Persons themselves are not sacred who invade those sacred Jurisdictions § XI AND it is particularly to be remarked that the common rights by which the Authority of all these particular Societies and Jurisdictions subsist must pâ—culiarly belong to God and therefore cannot be violated without the most direct affront to the Divine Majesty and the most terrible expectations of punishment They belong I say more immediately to his care than those things which even men are empowered to take care of by virtue of the general Authority which they have received from him and which only concern their own Societies respectively In all subordinations of Governours by how much any rules are of more general concernment by so much more properly they are supposed to exceed the extent of the power of inferior Governours and therefore to belong more properly to him who has the right of that whole extent which is concerned in those rules And therefore seeing that the right of Jurisdictions in general is of much greater extent than any particular Jurisdiction therefore it cannot belong to the right of particular Governours and because it is the common concernment of the whole Catholick Church therefore it must accordingly be proper for him alone who alone is concerned for the whole Catholick Church in general Besides that it is antecedent to the right of all particular Governours For the right of particular Governours within particular Jurisdictions is founded on the right of Jurisdictions in general Therefore it is that particular Governours have right within particular Jurisdictions because there is in general a right in the whole Church to distinguish Jurisdictions and to appropriate the power of them to their respective Officers when they are so distinguished and because according to the common rules of equity to be observed in making this distinction this particular Jurisdiction has fallen to the share of these
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
Religion even all that assurance of the safety of their condition which they are capable of receiving even in the external Solemnities of the Covenant and the application of the external Seals These themselves they may receive if not in the Church from whence they are ejected yet in some other where they may be received upon their ejection who may have as just an Authority to administer the Sacraments as the Church which has ejected them and is no more obliged to stand to the judgment of the Church who has ejected them than she is to stand to hers but is every way as competent a Judg of the qualifications to be required from those who are to be admitted to her own Communion This indeed seems to be the true reason why all the Discipline of particular Churches has been so insignificant since the Catholick has been divided into so many parties who are ready to receive each others Excommunicates They only can be terrified to do their duty who must otherwise be excluded from the Catholick Church to which alone the priviledges of the Church can be thought confined But for avoiding this whatever censures they lye under from particular Churches two excuses are obvious from our Adversaries Principles Either they make the Vnity of the Catholick Church such as that they may be conteined in it who are excluded from the visible Communion of all particulars or if they require visible Communion with some particular Church to Communion with the Catholick yet they have been used to contein under the name of the Catholick Church all the several divided parties those which are Heretical and Schismatical as well as the Orthodox And upon these terms it is impossible for any censures to deprive of the whole visible Communion of the Church As the case stands now the very case of being excommunicated by one Church is a recommendation to others to receive them And if none others would yet it is but the setting up a new Communion of their own which any censured Persons may do with as good right as many others have done before them § X TO this that I may reply I must first freely confess that if it were possible to retein the Vnity of the Catholick Church whilest men are excommunicated out of the particular Churches to which they are more particularly related at least if their exclusion from their particular Churches were not so much as a presumptive exclusion from the Catholick but that excommunicated Members might not only as certainly be but also as certainly assure themselves that they are Members of the Catholick Church as they could before when they were Members of their own particular Church I should then acknowledg that Persons so excommunicate could not have any reason to apprehend themselves to be in any such danger of Salvation as might oblige them to such unsinful condescensions as those are concerning which I have been speaking in order to the avoiding of that danger For it is to be considered that as the whole immediate effect of Excommunication is privative so the deprivations of the benefits of Ecclesiastical Communion do herein differ from the deprivations of Secular censures that the benefits cannot be taken away in one place if they may be enjoyed in another He who is banished from England may really be deprived of all those accommodations which he is intitled to as a Subject of England which is all that the power of England can do to him and which is a real effect of that power And yet at the same time he may enjoy the like or greater accommodations in France because these are capable of being enjoyed by them who are deprived of their English Freedoms The difference of Country is sufficient in this case to afford some places priviledges different from the priviledges of others Put the Spiritual advantages whereof men are deprived by Excommunication the pardon of sin the giving of the Holy Ghost the promises of future and eternal Rewards are things impossible to be enjoyed in one place if they be wanting in another It is God himself that must immediately ratifie them and his power is equally concerned for the Church who has exercised her power of Excommunication as for her who receives the others Excommunicates And therefore if notwithstanding the Excommunication of such Persons they may yet communicate in other Churches and expect that God should confirm to them the benefits of such Vncanonical Communions they must consequently expect that God in doing so must disanul the censures of the Church which has Excommunicated them Which must consequently disoblige all who think so from all condescensions on their part for the recovery of the Communion of which they are deprived § XI AND if Persons Excommunicated in one place may be received in another without so much as the formalities of an absolution to repeal the sentence which has been passed against them nay must never have been presumed to have been cast out of the Communion of the Catholick Church by the Excommunications of their own Church then they must still be supposed to have continued in a state of Pardon and Possession of the Spirit upon performance of the moral conditions of the Gospel And then what effect can their Excommunication be supposed to have upon them that may oblige them to any condescensions in order to an Absolution And therefore that I may settle the Discipline of particular Churches on a solid foundation it will be necessary to shew that the Vnity of particular Churches is in the ordinary constitution of things so inseparable from the Vnity of the Catholick Church as that whoever is cut off designedly from the Vnity of a particular Church however it come to pass whether by his own act or the act of his Superiors cannot at the same time be presumed to retein the Vnity of the Catholick Church Whence it will follow that as I have proved our Brethrens separation to divide them from the Vnity of their particular Churches of which they are Members respectively so it must consequently divide them from the Vnity of the Catholick Church and so be as properly Schismatical in respect of that as it is in respect of their particular Churches But I could wish that they would remember that the reason obliging me to this is the interest of the Discipline of all particular Churches in it and the unpracticableness of that Discipline without it by what form of Government soever it be administred whether Monarchically or Aristocratically or Democratically All who maintein any power of Church censures are as much concerned for it as I am Neither the Presbyterians nor the Independents themselves can ever expect that their censures can oblige any to perform their duty if all they do be only to exclude him from the Ordinances of their own particular Congregations but that notwithstanding he may as validly partake of Ordinances in other Congregations as he did before and be received on as easie terms as if he
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
a due respect to Governours is a Consideration so principal in this kind of performances as may make amends for any mistakes in the Expediency of particular Impositions Nay I might have shewn that the great Ends of publick Edification might on these Supposals have been as effectually promoted in many mistaken Impositions as if there had been no mistake at all And where the mistake is so no way dangerous where it has so very little if any influence on that which alone in the estimation of Equal Persons makes the Practice commendable nay where Disobedience is certainly a greater Evil than can be feared from any mistake in the Imposition it self what imaginable reason is there why we should be refractory § XXIV BESIDES the mistake if any were belong's not to our Province and consequently cannot be imputable to Vs but our Superiors And though the mistake were chargeable on us as an Imprudence yet how can it be reputed as a Sin Especially considering that it neither involves us in the violation of any of the Divine Commandments nor even in a sinful violation of the Moral Obligation of Prudence it self For can they think all our less discreet Actions to be Formal Sins on account of their being so Or can it be a Sinful violation of the Law of Prudence it self to do that which is not so serviceable to its immediate end with a design upon a greater And is not that the Case exactly here Is not the preservation of the Churches Peace by a complyance with less Prudent Impositions a more considerable End than the Edification of particular Persons by the suitableness of every particular Ceremony Will themselves think it agreeable to the Laws of Christian Prudence sometimes to comply with the weakness nay with the humoursomness of well-meaning Brethren whom they think mistaken And can they think the same condescention Sinful and Imprudent only when it connives at the equally-pardonable mistakes of a Lawful Authority If these Presumptions be not sufficient for Governours to exert their Authority over Refractory Subjects that either the matters themselves are of so little concernment as that the Consciences of their Subjects cannot be reasonably prejudiced by any mistakes concerning them or if otherwise that the native Evidence of the things is sufficient to satisfie all Inquisitive well-meaning Persons I confess I do not see how they can avoid making the Duty of Governours intricate and unpracticable which certainly is to make it otherwise than God has made it And if Governours acting bona fide on these Presumptions must necessarily interfere with the Consciences of the generality of their well-meaning and Inquisitive Subjects as I think it follows unavoidably from our dissenting Brethrens Principles this methinks would be sufficient to discover the Falshood of them For certainly the Catholick Peace of the Church as a Body Politick is Fundamentally grounded on this reconcileableness of the Duty of well-meaning Conscientious Governours with the Duty of the generality of their well-meaning Conscientious Subjects and therefore those Principles which hinder the possibility of reconciling them must on that very account remain convicted of being False as well as Vnpeaceable § XXV AND if our Brethren do not allow this power to the Governours of their own Parties why do they Censure or separate from Dissenters from themselves If they do how can they excuse themselves for separating from their own Governours at first and giving others a Precedent by them unanswerable I am confident their own Doctrines and Decrees are not in many Cases capable of higher Evidence than ours as little clear from express Scripture or any obvious Consequence deduced from it and according to the sense of any Judicious impartial Person as liable to mistake If therefore notwithstanding this they think their Proof sufficient to ground a Presumption of their Ingenuity even in Persons dissenting from them I do not understand any disparity why they should not admit the like Presumption for our Ecclesiastical Governours § XXVI I KNOW there is a complaint taken up by some of our modern Adversaries that we misrepresent them as often as we tell them that they break off Communion with the Church of which they were Members for things Indifferent Nor do I conceive it necessary on this occasion to convince them of their mistake and our own Fidelity by references to their own more ancient and famous Authors For my part I do not think that there is any real difference betwixt even them and their Predecessors but only in a misunderstanding of the Notion of Indifferency that is ascribed to such Impositions of their Superiors For if by Indifferency be meant an Indifferency in the Circumstances of Practice after they are Imposed we are so far from thinking that they believe them thus Indifferent as that we our Selves do not believe them so nor consequently have we here that ordinary occasion of such mistakes of ascribing our own Sentiments to them We our Selves believe them as Necessary to be done when they are commanded by our Lawful Superiors as they believe them Necessary to be omitted The Indifferency therefore which we our Selves believe to be in them and wherein we believe our Brethren also to be of our mind is in the nature of the things themselves antecedently to the determination of ordinary Ecclesiastical Superiors § XXVII AND if they do not believe them Indifferent in this sense why do they insist on the same Arguments with their Predecessors concerning Christian Liberty and the Perfection of the Scriptures For can they pretend Christian Liberty in such Instances wherein Christ himself has imposed on their Liberty Or do they think that the Scriptures taking no notice of a thing is sufficient not only to make the thing so omitted unlawful to be Imposed but unlawful also to be Practiced § XXVIII THIS acknowledged Indifferency therefore of the things Antecedently to the Interposition of Ecclesiastical Authority is the thing we conceive them to believe And their belief that the things are thus Indifferent Antecedently to Ecclesiastical Authority and yet are Vnlawful when Authority has interposed this I say we conceive perfectly destructive of such Authority For by this means such Authority can never oblige us to do any thing for its own sake when its interposition in a thing otherwise Lawful in it self is conceived sufficient to make it Vnlawful For it cannot be discerned what is done for the sake of this Authority but only in such instances where no other reason of doing a thing can be pretended If therefore nothing be done for it it cannot be conceived to have any obligation of its own which if it have not it is impossible it should be owned as an Authority § XXIX AS for the Authority of proposing Divine Laws obligatory Antecedently to their Proposal besides that when it comes to Practice it will not be found very significant with our Brethren when every private Person among them is permitted to Judg so freely for himself
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.
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
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
such Prayers § XVII Nor need any wonder that this should be so who believes that the passages of Scripture usually produced to prove the limittedness of the day of Grace do prove the thing they are produced for Which is the rather apposite to pur present purpose because this Author to the Hebrews makes the time of adhering to the Church-Assemblies to be the day (b) Heb. iii. 13 of Grace if he carry on the same design in that place as in the 10th Chapter And indeed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the 3d Chapter seems to make it exactly Parallel with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the (c) Heb. x. 25 10th and to express the very use of their Ecclesiastical Assemblies And what do we think was the use of that ceremony of shaking off the dust of their feet against refractory Persons for a testimony against them which was instituted by our Saviour himself with a promise that he would ratifie their censures in using it that it should be x. 14 15. Mark vi 11 Luk. ix 5 x. 11 12. more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of Judgment than for such Persons on whom these censures should be inflicted Why do we find St. Paul (e) Act. xiii 51 xviii 6 when he used these censures immediately to desert the Society of those against whom he had used them and to forbear the use of any farther mâ—ans for their recovery if he had not thought the condition of such Persons desperate and the use of any further means unavailable for their good And if they dealt so with those who never yet had received the Gospel on their first addresses to them when they had behaved themselves very obstinately and perversly and yet withall profess that the condition of Lapserâ— is much worse than if they never had received the Gospel it must follow that whatever was implyed by that ceremony must much rather agree to these Apostates than to those to whom it was used § XVIII Besides the Apostle pronouncing the sentence of (f) 1 Cor. xvi 22 Anathema Maranatha against those who loved not the Lord Jesus if by not loving our Lord Jesus be meant Apostatizing from the visible Profession of his Doctrine and the visible Communion of those who were united in that Profession as a (g) Dr. Hammond Learned Man has proved and if by Maranatha be meant the same degree of Excommunication in the Syriack Idiome with that which the Jews in the ordinary Hebrew Idiome call Shammatâ—a as there is very little doubt but it is this will also suppose the Persons against whom it was used in the same condition uncapable of being benefited by Prayers which were afforded them under the first censures but denied them under the last which was a consignation of them to the Judgment of God himself And indeed the fiery indignation which should devour the Adversaries mentioned in the (h) Heb. x. 27 Hebrews as it is frequently mentioned as the punishment of refractory Persons and Apostates so the time allotted for the infliction of this punishment is still determined to the (i) 2 Thess. i. 7 8 9 10 11. St. Jud. 13.14 15. coming of the Lord which exactly describes the condition of Persons described in this Sentence However the least that can be inferred from these places concerning the desperate condition of Relapsers is that at least they have not that confidence of being received even upon their return without compleat satisfaction which those have who at first come over to the Christian Profession which was unanimously granted by the Catholick Church even in those times when the Novatian Heresie was unanimously condemned by them and that Relapsing is a sin of so great guilt as though every inferiour degree of it be not unpardonable yet becomes easily so when it is persisted in with any great degree of obstinacy and obduration and which withall of its own nature is more likely to come to that degree than other sins which are not naturally so placular which is a very prudent sufficient reason of that particular degree of zeal which the sacred Writers make use of against this rather than any other sin and which may withall as nearly concern our Brethren and oblige them to recover themselves out of the danger as it did those to whom these things were addressed by the Apostles And indeed I am very apt to believe that this was the true sense of the sacred Writers But concerning the Novatian Heresie I have elsewhere (k) Proleg ad D. Stearne de Obstin discoursed as much as may suffice for our present concernment And thither I refer my Reader § XIX However Whether it were impossible to hope or not impossible that the Prayers of Persons out of the Churches Communion might be heard for their reconciliation yet there can be no reason to admire that this should have been the Practice of the Church to forbear Praying for Spiritual Benefit of Religion for Persons who as yet were not actual members of the Churches Communion nay to distrust their being heard in such Prayers if they should have made them I will not now mention any Arguments taken from the reason of the thing but only such as may clear the actual Practice of the Church And certainly there cannot be a more likely Precedent for the Church's behaviour in this particular than our Saviours first instructions to his Disciples when he sent them forth to preach the Gospel And they were these (a) St. Matt. x. 12 13. When ye come into any house salute it And if the house be worthy let your peace come upon it but if it be not worthy let your peace return unto you I need not warn that the wishing Peace among the Jews was the same customary form of Salutation as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was among the Greeks It appears sufficiently from the Text it self to go no further where Salutation mentioned in the former verse is explained in the latter by letting their Peace come upon it And particularly that by this form of Peace all Prosperity is understood but especially that of their Ecclesiastical state So it appears when the Psalmist is so earnest in exhorting every Pious Person to (b) Psal. cxxii 6 pray for the peace of Hierusalem And therefore when it is said that in case the house where they were proved not worthy their Peace should return to themselves the meaning seems plainly the same with that already observed in the 2d Epistle of St. John that they should forbear those Salutations and consequently that they should not presume to pray for any of those Spiritual good things as were signified by them for such Persons as these were and indeed he gave them no encouragement to expect that such Prayers should be heard because he did not undertake to ratifie them as he did where the Persons were worthy And accordingly as this form of Salutation is used in several of the
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
of the Bishops were so linked to him by the dependence he had brought them to as that they could not be trusted as equal Judges in matters concerning his Authority and yet the publick exigence of the Age forced them on those disputes they were then also interested to weaken their Authority when they found it so prejudicial to their great design This was plainly the case when the disputes came in between Popes and General Councils If those were to be tryed by Bishops the Popes must evidently have carried it Not only the dependence of those who were already made on him for their preferment but the multitudes more he might have made when he had seen it useful for his purpose of Titulars and Dependents as he did in Trent might have secured him of the major votes of the Bishops in any Council that would be swayed by the major votes This the Papalins very well understood in the Council of Basil when knowing how small a proportion the Bishops bore in that Council to the rest that were allowed their votes there Aen. Sylv. Comment de gest Conc. Bas. and how sure they were to be over-voted so long as those other votes were allowed they desired that the matters might be determined by the Bishops alone according to the Precedents of former Councils But this the Cardinal of Arles the great Patron of that Council would by no means endure and among other Arguments on which he insists in asserting the right of Presbyters to a vote in Councils this is the principal of the opinion of St. Hierome concerning the original equality of Bishops and Presbyters And considering how many innovations the Councils of those times and this among the rest were forced upon by the exigency of their affairs rather than by their Judgment such as the votes of the Vniversities and of the Deputies of the Nations of which I verily believe no antienter precedent can be given none can admire if in this they were also transported beyond what they would have done otherwise And he who considers the reasonings of the Council for the Superiority of Councils above the Pope as they are represented by Aeneas Sylvius who was among them and then a friend of them when he gave this account of them will find that they are the very same which have been since insisted on by all Republicans and Enemies of Monarchy in general by which it is easie to judg how far the men of that party many of whom were Subjects to Monarchs were transported with the heats of the disputes then managed I mention not the exigency of affairs which necessitated the Fathers of the Reformation to take refuge in this Opinion when they also found how the generality of the Bishops then in being were by their interest obliged to stand by the Roman Court in the Prerogatives then disputed as well as by the Oaths they had taken at their Consecration and consequently how impossible it was to expect an impartial decision of their Disputes from an Order so interessed and obliged whether in or out of Councils I have really much better thoughts of the integrity of these Persons than of the Ages now mentioned But even well meaning Persons are undiscernibly inclinable to favour Propositions which are inclinable to their Interests and to have as little kindness for such as are against their interests And how far favour may go for the deciding things which are of themselves any thing disputable to divert men from considering the uttermost that can be said for a contrary cause and to make little things seem great when they are produced for a favourable Opinion he must be a stranger to Humane Nature and Conversation who has not observed However their Authority cannot be considerable in this matter because no Ordinations depended on them § IV I DO not by this discourse in the least prejudg against the evidence producible by our Adversaries in this cause I do not therefore prejudg against the Truth of their cause because their interest obliged them to defend it I am sensible how very possible it is that truth may concur with interest All therefore that I infer from these cases is that there was in all these cases interest that might divert Persons who were not very wary as well as sincere from the quest of Truth But truly considering the light of those times by which alone they were enabled to judg without prejudice to the light of our own Age which our modern Adversaries have produced and considering the prejudices by which they were generally acted I confess I cannot see how to excuse the mainteiners of this Opinion in those times from insincerity For how was it possible for them who received Isidore Mercator's wares for genuine to doubt of the Primitive Superiority of Bishops over Presbyters when he must find all the particular subordinations of the Episcopal Hierarchy so minutely described in Epistles ascribed to Clement Cletus Linus c. And what one was there from Hincmar's time downwards to the times we speak of who ever questioned them Who could question it that believed the many Legends then extant concerning the Primitive times of Christianity And who was there then who could find in his heart to question them especially considering their incompetency to judg of the evidence produced by our modern Adversaries They knew nothing of most of those Testimonies amassed by Blondel Many of their names they had not heard of at least they had not seen their Works or if they had seen they could not understand them as many of them as were in Greek and were not then translated The Scriptures themselves as they had been quoted by St. Hierome for this purpose were the principal Arguments they were capable of knowing But it is withal notorious how much more was then ascribed to Commentators of note than any evidence of the Text it self for the sense of the Scripture § V AND therefore I am apt to think that St. Hierome's Authority in applying those Texts prevailed more with them than any Inferences they could have made from the Texts themselves For we otherwise see very many instances of this partiality not only of forced Literal senses but also of Mystical ones which passed unquestioned among them and were used upon all occasions as Arguments against Adversaries on the Authority of Commentators of far less note than he was of And the single Authority of St. Hierome against not only the concurrent Testimonies of his own Age and of Authorities then esteemed every way as considerable as his own but which past for a much more prevailing Argument in the Ages I am speaking of against the concurrent practice of the then Catholick Church could not in any probability be taken for so convincing an Argument in Conscience in times that were so manifestly swayed by Authorities I mention not the partialities that most probably got St. Hierome himself that Authority among them that the very favourable Epistle of his to
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
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
censures of all others in order to the securing of her own Discipline it will thence follow that God as a Governour is obliged to secure this correspondence which himself has made so necessary by his own appointment And therefore where his own interposition is concerned as it is in ratifying the acts of Church-Authority he must be obliged to ratifie that act only which is in favour of this correspondence not that which overthrows it Not only as this way of dealing answers the deserts of the parties concerned in the case of which I am speaking but as he is by his own Government obliged only to ratifie such exercises of power as are performed by a just Authority And that such receptions are utterly destructive to this correspondence I think our Adversaries themselves can hardly question CHAP. XXVIII The Vsefulness of this Hypothesis above others THE CONTENTS § I 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 perswaded 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 Wordly 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. HAVING therefore thus finished my designed Method it will I suppose be very convenient to make some short reflections upon the usefulness of the whole design and of this particular way of managing it above others that have hitherto been ordinarily insisted on § II TWO things therefore I conceived my self obliged by the exigency of my cause to insist on 1. To let our separating Brethren understand as well as I was able their Obligation to submit to all unsinful conditions how hard soever they may seem otherwise when imposed on them by their Superiors as conditions of Communion as they are desirous to clear themselves of this charge of SCHISM And 2. Withal to let them see the great danger and mischievousness of this sin This as well as the former is a thing hitherto not sufficiently understood And when both of them are cleared I do not know what can be further necessary to make all good well-disposed Souls sensible of the great Obligation incumbent on them to return to Catholick Vnity § III THE former I have endeavoured by shewing that SCHISM is a breach of the Church's Vnity that the Vnity of the Church is that of a Body Politick that the Vnity of a Body Politick consists in a subordination to the Governours that the Body Politick is visible and therefore the Government must be so too that God has accordingly contrived the Sacraments as visible confederations of this Body Politick that by confining the ordinary communications of his Grace to the Sacraments he has put it in the power of them who have the power of the Sacraments to exclude from these ordinary conveyances of Graces that by confining the power of administring them to a certain Order of men he has put it in the power of those men to admit or exclude from the Sacraments whom and upon what conditions they please that from this contrivance of things there will necessarily follow a proper power of Government and of coercion at least in all things lawful however inconvenient that because nothing can follow from the Divine constitution of things but what was actually foreseen and designed by God in his actual constitution of them therefore this Government and the Obligation to Vnity resulting from it were also foreseen and designed by him Now in this way of stating the Government of the Church there are two advantages above any other ways of stating it that this way of explaining the Government will make it most wisely contrived for practice and most suitable to the nature of such a Society as the Church is and to such a Government as must be conceived most suitable to such a Society § IV 1. IT will hence appear to be most wisely contrived for practice And this is a consideration of great concernment in a matter so naturally and so principally designed for practice as Government is And it is a very strong presumption of the truth of it As it is certain that such Hypotheses concerning Government as make it unpracticable must for that very reason stand convicted of falshood how plausible soever they may seem otherwise so if there were others that might in other regards seem equally probable yet this would be a real advantage above them if it might be more practicable For this consideration being as I said principal in a matter of this nature it is certainly the wisest course to judg of inferior probabilities by it though we were otherwise unable to give particular Solutions of them as we do not the least scruple the existence of that motion which we see with our eyes notwithstanding all those Philosophical subtilties which may be objected against the existence of any motion because we take our sences for the most principal instruments of humane information Besides that such a Government will indeed appear to be most worthy of Gods Wisdom which appears most suitable to the ends for which God as a Governour was obliged to design