find in Scripture that all Ecclesiastick Commissions were either given by the hands of some of those first Apostles who received their Commission immediately from our Saviour or else by some of those secondary Apostles that were admitted into Apostolick Orders by them which secondary Apostles as was shewn before were the same with those whom we now call Bishops for so in Acts 6.3.6 the seven first Deacons we read of were Ordained by the Apostles the whole number of the Disciples being present but the Apostles only appointing and laying their hands on them and in Acts 14.23 we are told that Paul and Barnabas two of the Apostles ordained Elders in every Church that is of Lystra Iconium and Antioch and though these two were Ordained Apostles of the Gentiles by certain Prophets and Teachers in the Church of Antioch Acts 13.1.3 yet there is no doubt but those Prophets and Teachers where such as had received the Apostolick Character being ordained by the Apostles Bishops of the Churches of Syria for otherwise how could they have derived it For so Iudas and Silas are called Prophets Acts 15.32 and yet ver 22. they are said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Rulers among the Brethren or Bishops of Iudea and afterwards we find that Ordination was confined to such as had been admitted to the Apostolate for so the power of laying on of hands in the Church of Ephesus was committed by S. Paul to Timothy whom he himself by the laying on of hands had ordained the Apostle or Bishop of that Church 1 Tim. 5.22 1 Tim. 1.6 so also the power of Ordaining in the Church of Crete was by S. Paul committed to Titus whom he had also Ordained the Apostle or Bishop of that Church Tit. 1.5 for this cause left I thee in Crete to ordain Elders in every City Thus all through the whole Scripture History we find the power of Ordination administred by such and none but such as were of the Apostolick Order viz. either by the Prime Apostles or by the secondary Apostles or Bishops And if we consult the Primitive Antiquities which to be sure in matters of fact at least are the best Interpreters of Scripture we shall always find the power of giving Orders confined and limited to Bishops which is so undeniable that S. Ierom himself who endeavours his utmost to equalize Presbyters with Bishops is yet fain to do it with an excepta Ordinatione Ep. ad Evagr. Quid facit excepta Ordinatione Episcopus quod Presbyter non faciat What can the Bishop do except Ordaining that the Presbyter may not do also III. Another peculiar Ministry of the Bishops and Governours of the Church is to execute that spiritual Iurisdiction which Christ hath established in it i. e. to Cite such as are accused of scandalous offences before their Tribunals to inspect and examine the Accusation and upon sufficient evidence of the truth of it to admonish the offender of his fault and in case he obstinately persist in it to exclude him from the Communion of the Church and from all the Benefits of Christianity till such time as he gives sufficient evidence of his Repentance and amendment and then to receive him in again For that Christ hath established such a jurisdiction in his Church is evident from that passage Mat. 18.16 17 18. Moreover if thy Brother shall trespass against thee go tell him his fault between him and thee alone if he shall hear thee thou hast gain'd thy Brother but if he will not hear thee then take with thee one or two more that in the mouth of two or three Witnesses every word may be established i. e. that thou mayst be able in case he doth not then amend to produce sufficient testimony of his guilt before the Churches Tribunal to which thou art next to apply thy self and if he shall neglect to hear them i. e. to promise amendment upon their admonition take them along with thee and tell it to the Church that so she may examine the matter and upon thy proving his guilt by sufficient witness may Authoritatively admonish him to amend but if he neglect to hear the Church let him be unto thee as an Heathen man and a Publican i. e. give him over for a desperate sinner as one that is to be ejected from the Communion of the Church and no longer to enjoy the common benefits of a Christian for verily I say unto you that it is to you of the Church before whom this obstinate Offender is cited and accused for now he speaks no longer in the singular number Whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven i. e. whomsoever ye shall for just cause eject from the Communion of the Church into the state of a Heathen man and a Publican I will certainly exclude out of Heaven unless he reconcile himself to you by Confession and promise of amendment and if thereupon you pardon him and receive him into the Churches Communion I will most certainly pardon him too if he perform his promise for that by binding and loosing upon Earth our Saviour means excluding out of the Church and receiving in again is evident from that Parallel passage Mat. 16.19 I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven where by the Keys of the kingdom of Heaven is plainly meant the Authority of a Steward to govern his Church or Family for so Isa. 22.21 22. God promises Eliachim that he would cloath him with the Robe of Shebna who was over the Houshold ver 15. i. e. Steward of the Kings Family and that he would commit Shebna 's Government into his hand c. and then it follows And the Key of the House of David will I lay upon his shoulders so he shall open and none shall shut and he shall shut and none shall open that is in short I will make him the Governour of the Family and give him power to admit or exclude what Servants he pleases and accordingly by the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven must be meant the Government of the Church for so Keys denote Authority to Govern vid. Rev. 3.7 and by binding and loosing the power of shutting out of or readmitting into it and therefore in Iohn 20.23 this binding and loosing is thus expressed whose sins ye remit or loose shall be remitted or loosed whose sins ye retain or keep bound shall be retained or kept bound for though the words are different from those in S. Matthew yet they are of the same import and signification and consequently our Saviours meaning must be the same here as there viz. whose sins you loose from the penalty of exclusion from the Church I also will loose from the penalty of exclusion out of Heaven and whose sins
smallest threds and fibres of their hearts laid open and exposed to the view of men and Angels their own shame and the intolerable rack of their consciences will force them to confess their Charge and proclaim themselves guilty before all that vast Congregation of Spirits But O the inexpressible horror and confusion these wretched Souls will then be seized with when they shall see themselves thus publickly unmasked and turned inside outwards and be forced to stand forth like so many loathsom spectacles before God and his Angels without any excuse or retreat for their shame without any vail to hide their infamy and blushes when their filthy practices shall be no longer confined to the talk of a Town or a Village but be proclaimed in the hearing of all the rational World O now it would be happy for them if as formerly they could drown the retorts of their conscience in noise and laughter and forget its cutting repartees which were always uneasie to bear but impossible to Answer But alas those jolly days are gone and now in despite of themselves they must listen with horrour and confusion of face to what those two great Judges Iesus and their own Consciences unanimously give in charge against them Thus he whose piercing Eye doth now penetrate their hearts and ransack every corner of their souls will in that great day of discoveries bring forth all that secret filth that is there reposited and expose it for an infamous spectacle to the publick view of men and Angels IV. Another particular implied in this judgement of wicked men is their Sentence Their Trial being now over in which their guilt hath been sufficiently evinced and detected to their everlasting infamy and reproach they will by this time have received the sentence of death within themselves and stand condemned in the judgment of all the World the Righteous Iudg who is too great to be overawed too just to be bribed and too much provoked to be intreated whose Ears are now for ever stopped and whose Bowels are impenitrably hardened against all further Overtures of mercy will with a stern look and terrible voice pronounce that dreadful doom upon them Go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels which though it be of a horrible import will appear so just considering the horrible things which have been charged and proved against them that it will be immediately seconded with the unanimous suffrage of all that bright Corona of glorified Saints that sit as Assessors round the Throne who with one consent will all cry out together Iust and righteous art thou O Iudge of the World in all thy ways But O the fearful shrieks and lamentations that will then be heard from those poor condemned Creatures For if A Lord have mercy upon thee A take him Iailor from an earthly Iudge be able to extort so many sighs and tears from a hardened Malefactor what will A go ye cursed do from the mouth of the Righteous Iudge of the World and when so many millions of men and women shall be all involved together in the same doom and all at once lamenting their dismal fate Lord what a horrible outcry will they make Now in the bitter Agonies of their souls they will cry to heaven for mercy mercy but alas poor souls they cry too late their Iudg was once as importunate with them to have mercy upon themselves but because when he called they refused when he stretched forth his hands they regarded not now when they call he will not answer when they cry he will not hear but will laugh at their calamity as they did at his counsel and mock when their fear and destruction is come upon them V. And lastly Another particular implied in this Iudgment of the wicked is the execution of their Sentence For immediately after their sentence is past by which they stand doomed to everlasting fire an everlasting fire shall be kindled round about them a fire which within a few moments shall spread it self over all this lower World and convert the whole Almosphere about us into a furnace of inquenchable flames For then all those fiery particles which are every where intermingled with these terrestial Bodies and have hitherto been kept within their proper limits shall be disintangled and set free from those more gross and sluggish ones that now bind and fix them and swarm together like so many sparks into one huge globe of Fire which from the lower-most centre of the Earth shall spire up and kindle upon all that Airy Heaven above and with one continued flame fill all the vast expansum all that fiery matter which is now dispersed up and down within the entrails of the Earth shall by degrees gather together into Rivers of Fire which rolling to and fro within to force their way into the open Air will perhaps produce those prodigious Earthquakes of which our Saviour speaks by which at length the Earth being cleft and torn it shall every where vomit out Torrents of Fire from its flaming bowels and at the same time the Sea shall boil and swell and roar like water in a seething Pot till 't is all evaporated by the strugling flames from below which having rarified its waters into vapours shall kindle those vapours into flames and at the same time also the Heavens above shall groan and crack with incessant Thunder accompanied with thick and fearful flashes of Lightning which joyning with those vast streams of Fire that will be continually issuing out of the Earth and Sea will make such a prodigious deluge of flames as will quickly overflow the whole World. For thus we are assured from Scripture that the Element shall melt with fervent heat and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burnt up 2 Pet. 3.10 So also St. Iohn in his Vision of the day of Judgment Rev. 20.11 I saw a great white Throne and him that sate on it from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away and there was found no place for them not that the matter of them shall be annihilated but the form of them shall be destroyed by their being converted into an everlasting Fire and in this Fire shall those condemned wretches live and suffer to eternal Ages Hence it is called the vengeance of eternal fire and we are told that it will be in flaming fire that the Lord Jesus will render vengeance to all that know not God and obey not his Gospel 2 Thess. 1.8 And that this flaming fire shall be the conflagration of the World that of St. Peter seems plainly to imply 2 Pet. 3.7 But the heavens and the earth which are now are kept in store reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men and being reserved unto fire against the day of perdition of ungodly men we may justly conclude that the fire it is reserved to will be the Perdition of ungodly men Thus upon our Saviours pronouncing
you keep bound or obliged to that Penalty I also will keep bound and obliged to this This is the Spirtual Iurisdiction which Christ hath established in his Church to bind or loose suspend or restore excommunicate or absolve and this he hath wholly deposited in the Episcopal Order For in all the above-cited places it was only to his Apostles that he derived this Iurisdiction they alone were the Stewards to whom he committed the Keys and Government of his Family and it was to them alone that he promised that they should sit upon twelve Thrones judging the twelve Tribes of Israel that is to Rule and Govern the spiritual Israel which is the Christian Church even as the Phylarchae or Chiefs of the Tribes governed the twelve Tribes of natural Israel Mat. 19.28 and hence in that Mystical representation of the Church by a City descending from Heaven Rev. 21. the Wall of it is said to have twelve foundations and upon them twelve names of the twelve Apostles ver 14. and those twelve foundations are compared to twelve precious stones to denote their power and dignity in the Church ver 19 20. and the Wall being exactly meted is found to be 144 Cubits that is twelve times twelve to denote that these twelve Apostles had each of them an equal portion allotted him in the Government and administration of the Church ver 17. This spiritual Iurisdiction therefore of governing the Church and administring the Censures of it being by our Saviour wholly lodged in the Apostolate none can justly claim or pretend to it but such as are of the Apostolick Order and accordingly in the Apostolick Age we find it was always administred either immediately by the Apostles themselves or by the Bishops of the several Churches to whom they communicated their Order for thus in the Church of Corinth it was S. Paul who pronounced the Sentence of Excommunication against the incestuous person for I verily as absent in body but present in spirit have judged or pronounced Sentence already as though I were present concerning him that hath done this deed 1 Cor. 5.3 and what he orders them to do ver 4 5. was only to declare and execute his Sentence and 2 Cor. 13.2 he threatens them that heretofore had sinned that if he came again he would not spare them and that by his not sparing them he meant that he would proceed against them with Ecclesiastical Censures is evident from ver 1. In the mouth of two or three Witnesses shall every word be established which are the very words of our Saviour Matt. 18.16 when he instituted the power of Censuring and then ver 10. he tells them that he wrote these things being absent lest being present he should use severity according to the power which the Lord had given them to edification and not to destruction by which it is plain he means the power of Excommunicating and 1 Cor. 4.21 he threatens to come to them with a Rod that is to chastise them with the Censures of the Church and with this Rod as he himself tells he chastised Hymenoeus and Alexander two stickling Hereticks in the Church of Ephesus whom he delivered unto Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme 1 Tim. 1.20 and as he frequently executed the Censures of the Church in his own Person so he derived this spiritual Iurisdiction to Timothy and Titus whom he Ordained Apostles or Bishops of the Church of Ephesus and Crete for so he orders Timothy against an Elder Receive not an Accusation but before two or three Witnesses which plainly implies his Authority to examine and try the causes even of the Elders themselves when they were accused and to punish them if he found them guilty for so it follows Them that sin rebuke before all that others also may fear 1 Tim. 5.19 20. so also he exhorts Titus to exercise this his spiritual Jurisdiction A man that is an Heretick after the first and second admonition reject Tit. 3.10 which plainly implies that he had an Authority inherent in him as he was the Apostle or Bishop of Crete to Cite Examine Admonish and Censure persons of erronious Principles and the same Authority it is evident was inherent in the Angels or Bishops of the seven Churches of Asia Thus the Bishop of Ephesus had Authority to try such as said they were Apostles and were not and to convict them for Liars Rev. 2.2 and the Bishop of Pergamus is blamed for tolerating the Sect of the Nicolaitans in his Church ver 14 15. and so also is the Bishop of Thyatira for suffering that woman Iezebel ver 20. which plainly implies that the Authority of curbing and correcting those profligate Sectaries was inherent in them else why should they be blamed any more than others for not restraining them From all which it is evident that the power of Christian Jurisdiction was Originally seated in the Apostolate and that throughout the Apostolick Age it was always exercised by such and only such as were admitted into that sovereign Order viz. either by the twelve Prime Apostles or by those secondary Apostles whom they ordained Bishops of particular Churches and accordingly we find in the Primitive Ages the Bishops were the sole administrators of this spiritual Iurisdiction and though ordinarily they administred it with the advice and concurrence of their Presbytery yet this was more than they thought themselves obliged to for thus S. Cyprian in the time of his recess did by his own single Authority Excommunicate Felicissimus Augendus and others of his Presbyters Ep. 38 39. and when Rogatianus a Bishop of his Metropolitick Church complained to him in a Synod of a disorderly Deacon he tells him that pro Episcopatus vigore Cathedrae authoritate i. e. by his own Episcopal authority without appealing to the Synod he might have chastised him And the fifth Canon of the first Nicene Council plainly shews that it was then the judgment of the Catholick Church that the power of spiritual Iurisdiction was wholly seated in the Bishops for it decrees that in every Province there should be twice a year a Council of Bishops to examine whether any person Lay or Clergy had been unjustly excommunicated by his Bishop which shews that then this Sentence was inflicted by the Bishop only though afterwards to prevent abuses it was decreed in the Council of Carthage that the Bishop should hear no mans Cause but in the presence of his Clergy and that his Sentence should be void unless it were confirmed by their presence but yet still the Sentence was peculiarly his and not his Clergies In some Churches indeed the Bishops did many times delegatâ— power to their Presbyters both to excommunicate and absolve as perhaps S. Paul himself did in the Church of Corinth but in this case the Presbyter was only the Bishops mouth and his Sentence received all its force from that Episcopal Authority he was armed with IV. Another peculiar Ministry of the Bishops and Governours of