being well consider'd you ought not to have ascrib'd as somewhere you have done the very rights of the Priestly Function to the Civil Powers Grotius who has not had thanks from all for his liberality to the Civil Magistrate in relation to the Affairs of the Church hath yet made it his whole designe in the second Chapter of his Book De Imperio summarum potestatum circa Sacra to make it manifest that Authority about Holy things and the Sacred Function are distinct In the same person they may be as in Anius the King and Priest of Phoebus but not without Ordination For the Power depending upon our Lords Commission is not convey'd but by Succession through the hands of the Commissioned Our thirty seventh Article doth attribute to the King a Power of outward Rule in Ecclesiastical matters yet granteth not to him either the ministring of Gods Word or of the Sacraments And under the Law it was said unto Vzziah the King It pertaineth not unto thee Vzziah to burn incense unto the Lord but to the Priests the sons of Aaron that are consecrated to burn incense And because he would use his force in usurping the rights of the Priest God Almighty smote him with immediate Leprosie and taught him to discern betwixt might and right Yet the Kings of Iudah had power in the Synagogue They had â—o de facto neither in many things wherein they ordered Religion were they reproved Yet to say the truth the having such right is no where commanded in the Old Law which enjoyn'd not the people to have a King but upon conditions permitted one to them if they should prefer the customs of the Heathen-nations before the most excellent estate of Theocracie Wherefore let them see whether they build closely who establish the Ecclesiastical Power of Christian Princes upon the exercise of it amongst the Kings of Iudah It concerneth you also to consider whether you have not unduly ascrib'd unto the Prince as such the Power of the Keys and the Right of Ordination and Ministration of the Sacraments and Word of Christ. The Monarch say you or the Soveraign Assembly onely hath immediate Authority from God to teach and instruct the people and no man but the Soveraign receiveth his Power Dei Gratia simply He it is that hath authority not onely to preach which perhaps no man will deny but also to baptize and to administer the Sacrament of the Lords Supper and to consecrate both Temples and Pastors to Gods service If the Soveraign Power give me command though without the ceremony of imposition of hands to teach the Doctrine of my Leviathan in the Pulpit why am not I if my Doctrine and life be as good as yours a Minister as well as you This is saying and not proving and because the Power was from Christ derived to the Apostles and from them in Succession by Ordination and can be in none to whom it is not convey'd in such a Channel what you have said had you been versed in the several Writings of a Divine of the Church of England a man of greater and better Learning then either your self or Mr. Selden whose Doctrine you seem to have swallow'd down together with the good provisions of his Table and who is said to have mistaken the very staâ—e of the Erastian-Controversie whilst he defined Excommunication to be a censure inferring a civil penalty you would have either altered your opinion or aggravated your error It appeareth by what hath been delivered that there is Authority enough without the civil Sanction to make the Doctrines of the Apostles to become Laws to wit the Kingly Power of Christ whose Commissioners they were and who had power to cause their rights to descend to others by Ordination And before the days of Constantine there wanted not the Fountain of outward force not onely in our Lord who could dash in pieces Soveraigns of the finest mold but also in his Members who as is manifest from Ecclesiastical story had often strength enough to have check'd the fury of their persecutors and to have forc'd the yoke of Christ upon their necks But it seemed good to our blessed Lord during this state of mans probation to deal chiefly with him according to his reasonable nature and to invite rather then compel And yet methinks the threatnings of eternal vengeance seem to carry more force with them then all the prisons in the world And it is time to think that the Gospel obligeth when we hazard perpetual misery by disobeying it whether we be Jews or Greeks if its sound hath reached us Mr. Hobbes The Jews and Gentiles were to be damned not for their infidelity but their old sins If the Apostles Acts of Council were Laws they could not without sin be disobeyed But we read not any where that they who receiv'd not the Doctrine of Christ did therein sin but that they dyed in their sins that is that the sins against the Laws to which they owed obedience were not pardoned And those Laws were the Laws of Nature and the Civil Laws of the State whereto every Christian man had by pact submitted himself And therefore by the burthen which the Apostles might lay on such as they had converted are not to be understood Laws but Conditions proposed to those that sought Salvation which they might accept or refuse at their own peril without a new sin though not without the hazard of being condemned and excluded out of the Kingdom of God for their sins past And therefore of Infidels St. Iohn saith not the wrath of God shall come upon them but the wrath of God remaineth upon them and not that they shall be condemned but that they are condemned alreadie Stud. What will not a man say rather then acknowledge himself in an errour though the thing it self speaketh it Here 's mistake clap'd upon mistake yet the scales of the Leviathan are not so close but a blinde Archer may shoot between them Have you not read what our Lord said to his disciples after his resurrection Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned The Author also to the Hebrews exhorteth the Jews to believe in Christ and telleth them they shall for ever be excluded the Kingdom of heaven for their unbelief it they persevere in it as their forefathers came short of Canaan for the same reason And although S. Iohn in the places cited doth speak in the present tense yet in others of the same Chapter he speaketh in the future and in that very verse which you cite partially concealing the words which are against you he maketh their unbelief the cause of that severe decree which already was gone forth V. 18. He that believeth on him is not condemned but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in
body as he somtimes had but meerly by the framing again and moving of such matter as he is supposed to have wholly consisted of and by the help of which he hath done worthy or shameful acts then either the same man who obeyed or transgressed is not raised up to an estate of reward or punishment or else he is raised with all the parts of matter which conduced to action and appertained to him almost from the cradle to the grave and is therefore in the last day of such dimensions that he may not only equal the antient Gyants of which we read in story but likewise come nigh the bulk of those very mountains which they are said to have heaped up in defiance of Hâ—aven Mr. Hobbes Well whatsoever the essence of man is or whensoever any part of him is supposed to be happy it is most probable that at the last day the place of heaven shall be on earth The kingdom of God in the writings of Divines and specially in Sermons and treatises of devotion is taken most commonly for eternal felicity after this life in the highest heaven which they also call the kingdom of glory and somtimes for the earnest of that felicity sanctification which they term the kingdome of grace but never for the Monarchy that is to say the Soveraign power of God over any subjects acquired by their own consent which is the proper signification of Kingdom To the contrary I finde the Kingdom of God to signifie in most places of Scripture a Kingdom properly so named constituted by the votes of the people of Israel in peculiar manner wherein they chose God for their King by Covenant made with him upon Gods promising them the possession of the land of Canaan Now the Throne of this our King is in Heaven without any necessity evident in Scripture that man shall ascend to his happiness any higher then Gods footstool the earth Stud. There is no need of the consent of men in the right notion of the Kingdom of God for the Lord is King be the people never so unquiet Also there is nothing more frequent in the New Testament then the notion of Gods Kingdom of Grace in the dispensation of the Gospel and of glory in the highest Heavens And for the latter we pray in the second petition of that Form which our Lord taught us and the former we acknowledge in the Doxologie The holy Baptist being the fore-runner of the Christ preached unto the Jews who though they justifi'd themselves at present by the works of the Law yet held repentance necessary to the reception of the Messiah the Doctrine of Penance adding this reason because the kingdom of heaven was at hand and this had been an improper Doctrine if the Messiah as you dream was not to have a Kingdom till after more then sixteen hundred years Our Saviour therefore when he preached as his Fore-runner had done that Doctrine of Repentance he us'd not the same phrase Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand but he said Repent and believe the Gospel that is forsake sin and enter into the Kingdom of the Messiah by Grace Our Lord also in the twelfth Chapter of St. Matthew proveth by his great power over Satan and the Kingdom of darkness that the Kingdom of the Messiah was then come And he declared That Baptism was a Sacrament of entrance and admission into the Kingdom of the Gospel And he receiv'd the Hosannah's of the people who saluted him as that King of Israel who came unto them in the name of the Lord. And when he was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God should come he answered The Kingdom of God is within you that is it is already come it is amongst you The further manifestation of his Kingdom he foretold in prophesying of his coming to take vengeance on the bloudy Jews by his scourges the Romans in the destruction of Ierusalem the History of which as it standeth in Iosephus if it be duly compared with the predictions of our Lord is sufficient to stop the widest mouth of profaneness and to hold up a powerful light against the dim Ey-balls of the most forsaken Atheists To this the words of St. Mark have relation in the ninth Chapter and first Verse Verily I say unto you that there be some of them that stand here which shall not taste of death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power Mr. Hobbes Those words alledged by Beza long ago if taken grammatically make it certain that either some of those men that stood by Christ at that time are yet alive or else that the Kingdom of God must be now in this present world But yet if this Kingdom were to come at the Resurrection of Christ why is it said Some of them rather then All for they all lived till after Christ was risen Stud. Christ at his Resurrection had vindicated to himself by way of conquest over Death and Hell this spiritual Kingdom but the manifestation of it in power was displayed in the desolation of the City of Ierusalem And because for instance St. Iohn liv'd to see the triumph of Christ over his bloud-thirsty Enemies though all the Apostles did not there was therefore reason for saying Some of them rather then All. Mr. Hobbes If it be lawful to conjecture at the meaning of the words by that which immediately follows both here and in St. Luke where the same is again repeated it is not unprobable to say they have relation to the Transfiguration which is described in the Verses immediately following And so the promise of Christ was accomplished by way of Vision Stud. You are to look backward and not forward for the words do manifestly relate to those of the eighth Chapter where our Saviour had commanded the embracers of his Gospel to take up the Cross and promised that by their constancie in their Christian Profession they should save their lives whilst others who would endeavour to preserve life by denying the persecuted faith should be destroyed and so it came to pass when Gallus even against the reason of State did raise the Siege before Ierusalem the Christians and convert-Jews escapeing whilst a door was open unto the Mountains and into the City Pella and not remaining 'till Titus some moneths after renewed the Siege After this exhortation to constancie and promise of deliverance our Saviour threatned that he would be ashamed of such who should refuse to confess him before men at his coming in the glory of his Father with his holy Angels which coming with Angels and open rejection of cowardly spirits importing their present claim and his refusal agreeth not to his Transfiguration which was transacted in secret with some of the Disciples and the apparition of Moses and Elias There is therefore reason for Divines to insist upon a kingdome of Christ alreadie come a kingdom of the Gospel neither want they
turn it to his benefit yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done As for the instance of attaining Soveraignty by Rebellion it is manifest that though the event follow yet because it cannot reasonably be expected but rather the contrary and because by gaining it so others are taught to gain the same in like manner the attempt thereof is against Reason Justice therefore that is to say keeping of Covenant is a rule of Reason by which we are forbidden to do any thing destructive to our life and consequently a law of Nature Stud. This then is the Doctrine of Politics in which you so much applaud your self and of the same strain with the pernicious Book entituled Natures Dowry printed the year after the Leviathan That Rebellion is not iniquity if upon probable grounds it becomes prosperous That he who usurps not like a Politician is therefore a Villain because he is a Fool That all the Usurpers in the World stepping up into the Throne by means likely to further their ascent pursue the Fundamental Law of Nature and are rightful and undoubted Soveraigns That the Earl of Essex in the Reign of Q. Elizabeth who after some stain of fame in Ireland and in the days of a popular Queen and in a time when he had potent enemies for strength and head-piece such as Cecil and Sir Walter Rawleigh appear'd with a small company upon presumption of the Queens love in case he should miscarry and upon hopes of the multitude not formed to his purpose by confederacie was a Rebel and a Traytor because he was a weak and unfortunate Politician but that Oliver who was led on by success to things he never dreamt of in the days of his Poverty and saw the power of the King declining and was as sure of being Protector as a King can be upon your grounds of remaining Soveraign by the inclination of the Souldiery and possession of the Militia and therefore usurp'd upon as sure foundations of self-interest as the nature of Civil Affairs admitteth of was by the direct consequence of your opinion a lawful Prince a man of inestimable merit and renown worthy the Government of thrice three Kingdoms of dying in his bed and of a Fame too wide to be contain'd betwixt the Deucalidonian and Brittish Ocean No no there are words more agreeable to his merit and they have nothing Poetick in them besides the genuine strain of verse Curst be the man what do I wish as though The wretch already were not so But curst on let him be who thinks it brave And great his Country to enslave Who seeks to overpoise alone The Balance of a Nation Against the whole but naked State Who in his own light scale makes up with Arms the weight Mr. Hobbes I have written concerning Oliver that his Titles and actions were equally unjust Stud. This you wrote indeed but since the return of his Sacred Majesty who if men had pursu'd your destructive Principles and judg'd his Right to have ceased with his Power had for ever been destitute of any other Throne then what had been erected in the hearts of the Loyal Mr. White also the part-boyl'd Romanist who is honour'd with the Title of Most Learned in the scurrilous Preface to your Book of Fate declar'd in English in an unhappy time that a dispossessed Prince ought neither to be desired nor to endeavour to return if the people think themselves to be well and their Trade and Employment be undisturb'd And he addeth also Who can answer they shall be better by the return of the dispossessed party Surely in common presumption the gainer is like to defend them better then he who lost it Certainly for this sentence at such a time published to this Nation if for no other cause his Books ought to be burnt in England as well as some of them have been condemned at Rome unless we suppose the crabbedness of the stile and the obscureness and weakness of the Reasoning in them may tempt the Author when better informed to save Authority the labour of it Dr. Baily likewise revolting from the Church of England forsook his Loyalty at the same time and caressed Oliver and hop'd that by his means the Pope might come again and set his Imperial feet upon the neck of English Princes For he concludes his Legend of the Bishop of Rochester after this manner Thus we see Gods Justice in the destruction of the Churches Enemies meaning Thomas Cromwel Vicar-General of the Church under Henry the eighth and spoiler of Religious Houses who knows but that he may help her to such Friends though not such as may restore her own Jewels yet such as may heal her of her wounds And who knows but that it may be effected by the same name Oliva vera is not so hard to be construed Oliverus as that it may not be believed that a Prophet rather then an Herald gave the common Father of Christendom the now Pope of Rome Innocent the Tenth such Ensignes of his Nobility viz. a Dove holding an Olive-branch in her mouth since it falls short in nothing of being both a Prophecy and fulfilled but only his Highness running into her arms whose Embleme of Innocence bears him alreadie in her mouth These Romanists and your self agree too well in owning of Uâ—â—rpers and measuring right by the length of the sword and therefore when such Politiâ—ians say that Olivers Titles and Actions were equally unjust they are to be understood in such a sense as when we say of a very Dâ—nce that he is as good a Logician as Grammarian that is in truth neither Mr. Hobbes Believe me Sir my Leviathan was written when Oliver was but General who had not yet cheated the Parliament of their usurped power and I never had a kindness for him or them I lived peaceably under his Government at my return from France and so did the Kings Bishops also Of the Bishops that then were there was not one that followed the King out of the Land though they loved him but lived quietly under the protection first of the Parliament and then of Oliver whose Titles and Actions were equally unjust without treachery Stud. That this is false your own Conscience will inform you for the then Lord Bishop of London-derry a man of whom to your cost you have heard convey'd himself beyond the Seas and was not there unmindful of the Kings interest although he hath not boasted of his Travels as you are wont to do of your living at Paris Let the testimony of Bishop Taylor who was as likely as any man to know and report the truth decide the controversie his words are these God having still resolved to afflict us the good man was forc'd into the fortune of the Patriarchs to leave his Country and his charges and seek for safety and bread in a strange Land This worthy man took up his Cross and followed his Master At his