the Church is the Pastors And these are the shortest plainest and least ambiguous terms and more clear than Internal Ecclesiastical and Civil which have all much obscurity and ambiguity Pag. 238. Princes only be Governours in things and Causes Ecclesiastical that is with the Sword Bishops be no Governours in those things with the Sword Pag. 240. We confess Princes to be Supream Governours Supream bearers of the Sword We give Princes no power to devise or invent new Religions to alter or change Sacraments to decide or debate doubts of faith to disturb or infringe the Canons of the Church But of these two last I must tell you what we Puritans as they call us hold 1. That the King may and must decide doubts of faith in order to execution by the Sword as who shall be banished or imprisoned as a Teacher of Heresie 2. And that Canons circa sacra not takeing the Pastors proper work out of his hand may be made by the Magistrate even if he please without the Prelates And if Pastors make Canons the◠are but in order to their proper way of execution Pag. 252. And if Princes shall not bear the Sword in things and Causes Ecclesiastical you must tell us who shall Since by Gods Law the Priest may not meddle with the Sword the consequent is inevitable that Princes alone are Gods Ministers bearing the Sword to reward and revenge good and evil in all things and causes be they Temporal Spiritual or Ecclesiastical unless you think that disorders and abuses Ecclesiastical should be freely permitted Page 256. This then is the Supream power of Princes which we teach That they be Gods Ministers in their own Dominions bearing the Sword freely to permit and publickly defend that which God commandeth So may they with just force remove whatsoever is erroneous vicious and superstitious within their Lands and with external losses and corporal pains repress the broachers and abetters of Heresies and all impieties From which subjection to Princes no man within their Realms Monk Priest Preacher or Prelate is exempted And without their Realms no mortal man hath any power from Christ judicially to depose them much less to invade them in open field least of all to warrant their Subjects to rebell against them These be the things which we contend for and not whether Princes be Christs Masters or the functions to preach baptize impose hands and forgive sins must be derived from the Princes power and Laws or the Apostles might enter to convert Countreys without Caesars delegations These be jests and shifts of yours Page 261. To Bishops speaking the Word of God Princes as well as others must yield obedience But if Bishops pass their Commission and speak besides the Word of God what they list both Prince and people may despise them Page 258. His Word is Truth and therefore your Bishops cannot be Judges of the Word of Christ but they must be Judges of Christ himself that speaketh by his Word which is no small presumption My Sheep hear my voice They be no Judges of his voice Page 259. If you take judging for discerning the People must be discerners and Judges of that which is taught Page 271. Ph. If General Councils might err the Church might err Th. As though none were of or in the Church but only Bishops Or all the Bishops of Christendome without exception were ever present at any Council Or the greater part of those that are present might not strike the stroke without the rest See pag. 350 351 352. Et seq That only Magistrates may touch body or goods Page 358. The Watchmen and Shepheards that serve Christ in his Church have their kind of Regiments distinct from the temporal Power and State But that Regiment of theirs is by Counsel and perswasion not by terror or Compulsion and reacheth neither to the goods nor to the bodies of any men Page 366. As for your Episcopal Power over Princes if that be it you seek for and not to take their Kingdoms from them I told you If they break the Law of God you may reprove them If they hear you not you may leave them in their sins and shut Heaven against them If they fall to open Heresie or wilful impiety you may refuse to communicate with them in prayers and other divine duties yea you must rather yield your lives with submission into their hands than deliver them the Word and Sacraments otherwise than God hath appointed Say you so I promise you Sir if Kings must be dealt so strictly with though it cost you your lives I will be a Non-conformist a little longer though it cost me my livelihood rather than give Baptism the Lords Supper Absolution and the justifying assertions at Burials as commonly as I must do if I conform P. 525. Pastors have their kind of Correction even over Princes but such as by Gods Law may stand with the Pastors Vocation and tend to the Princes salvation and that exceedeth not the Word and Sacraments Other Correction over any private man Pastors have none much less over Princes Princes may force their Subjects by the Temporal Sword Bishops may not force their flock with any corporal or external violence Pag. 526. Chrysostom saith For of all men Christian Bishops may least correct the faults of men by force Judges that are without the Church may compell But here in the Church we may not offer any violence but only perswade We have not so great authority given us by the Laws as to repress offenders And if it were lawful for us so to do we have no use of any such violent power for that Christ crowneth them which abstain from sin not of a forced but of a willing mind Hilary teacheth the same Lesson If this violence were used for the true faith the doctrine of Bishops would be against it God needeth no forced service He requireth no constrained confession I cannot receive any man but him that is willing ☜ I cannot give ear but to him that intreateth I cannot sign that is baptize any but him that gladly professeth So Origen For all the crimes which God would have revenged he would have them revenged not by the Bishops and Rulers of the Church but by the Judges of the world Bishops by vertue of their Callings cannot command others or authorize violence or arms Pag. 541. Parliaments have been kept by the King and his Barons the Clergy wholly excluded and yet their Acts and Statutes good And when the Bishops were present their Voices from the Conquest to this day were never Negative By Gods Law you have nothing to do with making Laws for Kingdoms and Commonwealths You may teach you may not command Perswasion is your part Compulsion is the Princes Page 245. Far better St. Ambrose saith If the Emperour ask for Tribute we deny it not The Lands of the Church pay Tribute If he affect the Lands themselves he hath power to take them no man among us is any let to
THE DIFFERENCE Between the POWER OF MAGISTRATES AND CHURCH-PASTORS AND THE ROMAN KINGDOM MAGISTRACY Under the Name of a CHURCH CHURCH-GOVERNMENT Usurped by the Pope or liberally given him by Popish Princes Opened by Richard Baxter To the Learned and Sincere Ludovicus Molinaeus Dr of Physick and Author of Jugulum Causae Papa Ultrajectinus and other Books on this subject For the Vindication of the true Pastoral Discipline exercised by the Ancient Churches and claimed but alas too little exercised by the Churches called Protestant and Reformed And to acquaint Posterity what we hold in this that false accusations misinform them not LONDON Printed for Nevil Simmons at the Sign of the three Crowns near Holborn Conduit 1671. READER THE first Epistle is now written upon the sight of Jugulum Causae The other with the Propositions was written about a year and half ago upon the sight of Papa ultrajectinus c. and the Paraenesis contra Aedificatores Imperii in Imperio And the design of all is to shew how little or nothing at all the sober moderate Protestants called Episcopal Presbyterian Independent and Political or Erastian are disagreed in all this business whilst I name you near a hundred Propositions in which they commonly consent That Princes and all Magistrates may see that they have no cause to be offended at the Christian and Protestant Doctrine or to judge the true Religion of any of these parties as such to be contrary to their interest when in very truth they are in that all one But that among all Sects and Parties there will be still some injudicious intemperate and unpeaceable men especially those whose Interest in the world is Great and cannot be upheld without encroaching on the rights of others As Great Trees must have much room and suffer nothing to prosper under them but Weeds and Bryars And it is to tell Politicians that the true Pastoral Power being a Power to labour and suffer in patient self-denyal for the Church of Christ and the souls of men is past all doubt of Christs appointment And to diminish that Power is but to diminish our obligation to labour and suffer and to gratifie our sloth and fleshly interest But to diminish that Secular Church-power which Clergie men claim as of Divine Right is but for Princes to be Princes whether the Clergie will or no. And as to the Learned Author Dr. Lud. Molinaeus my meaning is to second him in awakening Magistrates to reassume their proper power and to leave it in no Clergie mens hands of what party soever But as to his reflections on the Protestants Discipline lovingly to chide him for making the difference seem wider than it is and to RECONCILE the four Parties while I distinctly open the common Doctrine of them all excepting the rigid Opinions of some interessed or intemperate individuals My Learned Sincere and Worthy Friend WHEN I had hastily set down my judgement of the Cause which I found handled in your Papa Ultrajectinus and other Writings which you sent me I cast by that Script which I intended at the writing of it for your view that I might surely keep it from the notice of others in this Age wherein the prevalency of Interest Faction Passion and Injudiciousness doth make it so great a difficulty to say any thing for the cure of any mens errors enormities or impieties which shall not be charged with the same crime or greater which it would cure and be taken for a disturber of the Church and Peace which it would save or heal But now seeing that you renew your endeavours in the same Cause and finding your Jugulum Causae directed to so many hands by seventy particular Epistles and that you have honoured me with a place among those great and worthy persons I take my self obliged to render you some account of my judgement of your Writings and especially of the whole Cause by bringing into the open light those hundred Propositions which I had purposed to conceal And withal to tell you 1. That though you have much overvalued me in your recitation of their report who would have joyned me with so Great so Wise and Good a man as A Bishop Usher and that in so great a work and experience may tell you that other men have other thoughts of me as one unmeet to preach the Gospel in the Land of my Nativity much more unmeet to be a decider of the Churches Controversies yet you have truly described my judgement of your self and your undertaking I confess I hope not that ever you should make the Roman Usurpation more palpable than the falshood of their Doctrine of Transubstantiation where they maintain not only the Corporal Presence which is not it that I now mean but that Bread is not Bread and Wine is not Wine when all men see taste smell and feel them And if the Princes Doctors and great men of the world can thus obstinately deny or take on them to deny the judgement which is made of sensible objects by all mens senses you may gather what fruit you may expect of your labours or of any Cause how plain soever where prejudice and seeming interest are against you Can all the Writings or Reasonings in the world bring any thing to a more clear and sure decision than that of all the senses of all men in the world about the proper objects of sense If flesh so far conquer flesh it self and the interest of sensuality can cause such men and such multitudes to renounce the apprehension of all their senses what have we to do more for the cure of mankind You have made it plain enough that it is really a part of the Secular Government of Kings and States which is now commonly called Ecclesiastical among the Papists and as such is challenged and usurped by the Pope and that Princes that subject their Kingdoms to his Usurpation do take in a joint Ruler with them and divide their Kingdoms or Power between themselves and him But so they have done and so they will do till the Time of the Churches fuller Reformation and of the Coalition of the Christian world is come I know you may think that as Interest blindeth them so this great detection of the Invasion of their Interest is the way to bring them to the truth For who will have a Co-partner with him in his Kingdom that may choose Who had not rather Rule alone than divide his Kingdom with the Pope Undoubtedly they give away more of their own Interest hereby than you have opened When they deliver part of their power to one who by an approved General Council of their own which is the Religion of their Party Later sub Innoc. 3. Can. 2. 3. may depose Temporal Lords though no Protestants themselves that will not exterminate those that deny Transubstantiation out of their Dominions and may absolve their subjects from their fidelity and may give their Countryes unto others When their most Learned
Renowned applauded Doctors teach that the Pope may excommunicate Kings and that an excommunicated King is no King and he that killeth him killeth not a King When the Roman Council under Greg. 7. decreeth that the Pope may depose Emperours And the same Greg. 7. li. 4. Ep. 7. conspireth in the like Doctrine The Oration of Card. Peron is well known If so great a Kingdom as France that glorieth of its Church-liberties can bear so much what will not those bear that are less able to deliver themselves The words of this Great and pretendedly Moderate Cardinal in a Moderate Kingdom in a publick Writing against a Protestant Learned King King James pag. 453. as cited by A. Bishop Usher of Babylon pag. 163. is fit to be written on the Doors of all Princes and of the Pope himself in Capital Letters viz. By this Article that Kings may not be deposed by the Pope We are cast headlong into a manifest Heresie as binding us to confess that for many Ages past the Catholick Church hath been banished out of the whole world For if the Champions of the Doctrine contrary to this Article do hold an impious and detestable opinion contrary to Gods Word then doubtless the Pope for so many hundred years expired hath not been the Head of the Church but a HERETICK and the ANTICHRIST What would you have more to satisfie Kings than their own profession that Either the Pope may depose Kings or 〈◊〉 he is not the Head of the Church but an Heretick and Antichâ—iâ—t and hath been so for many hundred years Can you shâ—w their Interest plainlier than all this And lest any say that this is but the Doctrine of the Jesuits remember that Perron was another kind of man and the famous Perverter of King Henry the fourth And I will cite here the words of one more of a multitude even one that wrote so long ago as to be numbred with the Fathers in Biblioth Patr. To. 4 p. 913. and a Roman Cardinal Bertrard Card. Epis. Eduens de Orig. usu Jurisd Qu. 4. Respondeo dico quod Potestas Spiritualis debet dominari omni humanae Creaturae per rationes Hostiensis Item quia Jesus Christus silius Dei dum fuit in hoc mundo etiam ab aeternâ— naturalis dominus fuit de jure naturali in Imperatores quoseunque alios depositionis sententias ferre potuisset damnationis quaseunque alias Utpote in personas quas creaverat donis naturalibus gratuito donaverat etiam conservabat Et eadem ratione etiam ejus Vicarius potest Nam non videtur discretus Dominus fuisse ut cum reverentia ejus loquar nisi unicum post se talem Vicarium reliquisset qui haec omnia posset Fuit autem iste Vicarius ejus Petrus apud Mattheum Et idem dicendum est de successoribus Petri cum eadem absurditas sequeretur si post mortem Petri humanam naturam a se creatam sine regimine unius personae reliquisset I will English it lest the unlearned believe not what Fathers what a Biblioth Patrum what Cardinals and what Doctrines the Roman Clergy obtrude upon the Christian world I answer and say that the spiritual Power ought to have domination over every humane creature by Hostiensis reasons Also because Jesus Christ the Son of God while he was in this world and also from Eternity was the Natural Lord and by Natural Right could pass the sentence of Deposition and of Damnation and any other upon Emperours and upon any others as being persons that he had created and endowed with Natural Gifts and freely and also preserved And by the same reason his Vicar can do it For the Lord seemeth not to have been discreet that I may speak with reverence to him unless he had left behind him one such Vicar who could do all these things And in Matthew this his Vicar was Peter And the same must be said of the successors of Peter seeing the same absurdity would follow if after the death of Peter he had left humane nature created by himself without the Regiment of One person Do you think this is not plain dealing enough if men are willing to understand I know that there were Emperours and Princes that strugled hard before they suffered themselves to be thus subjected And these Emperours had Lawyers Statesmen and Divines that took their parts as all the Treatises in Goldastus his three Volumes de Monarch and his Imp. Constit. shew But still those that sided with the Pope spake contrary as the argumentations of those Books besides the Authors whom they oppose do shew And alas Occham and Marsilius Patavinus and Widdrington and Barclay came all too late For all that Secular Power which was cloaked with the name of Ecclesiastical and Spiritual was before so deeply rooted in the Papacy that they durst plead for no more than that Princes are not subject to the Pope in Temporals But as you truly note abundance of Temporals and of the Magistrates proper work about things Ecclesiastical was still vailed under the name of Spiritual And at last even the Temporal Power again claimed more subtilly and indirectly as in ordine ad spiritualia But you 'l say that All men are naturally so regardful of their own Interest and especially Princes that it is not possible they should be so servile tame and self-abasing as to give away so great a part of their Kingdoms to a Forreigner yea to one that claimeth all by himself or by his most famous Writers and by his Councils claimeth a power to depose them They that with their own Nobles and other Subjects are so jealous of their Prerogatives would never so far depose themselves if they did but know what they do And therefore when Popish Princes understand the matter they will shake off the yoke and reâ—ssume their right Answ. It 's true that Protestant Princes and States have done so And the true meaning of our Oath of Supremacy is the same with your main design And though some have stumbled at those words that the King is Supream Governour in all Causes Ecclesiastical the meaning is only as hath been oft publickly declared that he is the Supream Civil or Coactive Governour by the Sword in all Causes Ecclesiastical so far as they fall under that Coactive or Coercive Government And hereby the King doth but reassume the Royal Power over the Clergy and the affairs of Religion which the Pope had usurped under the name of Ecclesiastical For it s well known what was called Ecclesiastical Power in England in the times of Popery so that this much of the Vail is removed long ago among all Protestants And if you peruse but Bishop Bilsons excellent Tract of Christian Subjection and Bishop Andrews his Tortura Torti to pass by all others you will see that this Case is better opened than I for my part am able to open
and Religion Now I call not all this an Usurpation of Magistracy so far as he useth no Corporal force and threatneth no penalty but excommunication and damnation For every true Pastor with his own flock hath the Power of Guiding them by delivering Christs Doctrine and Precepts and commanding obedience as his Servant or Embassadour in his Name and of denouncing his judgements and of judging obligingly who are fit to be taken in to the Church by Baptism and who to be cast out as Impenitent by excommunication in his own particular Charge or Society And if the Pope usurp a power of doing all this and more as an Universal Pastor only this is an Usurpation of a Church Power and not of a Magistracy And indeed if you will acquit him from the guilt of the Mysterie of Iniquity any further than he invadeth Magistracy it self you will do him a great deal of wrong For he is the Vicarius Christi and the Vice-Christ more notably by his Spiritual Usurpation of a power proper to Christ himself or at least of a power that Christ never gave him II. His setting up a KINGDOM and invading the MAGISTRACY is done I. Directly II. Indirectly and Consequentially I. Directly 1. By holding a Secular Jurisdiction as the King of Rome where he exerciseth the Supream Civil Power acknowledging no Superiour Civil Governour either as to the Legislation or Execution in all the parts of his own Dominions 2. By his laying claim to many Kingdoms as his own among which England is one as pretended to be delivered to him by King John and supposing that the Kings do hold them as under him and by his Grant 3. By laying claim to the Temporal or Corporal Government of all the world say some or of all the Christian world say others Of which you may see a multitude of Volumes written in the defence of his pretensions In particular all those aforesaid were of this subject which all Goldastus his Collected Treatises for the Right of Princes do confute I gave you Cardinal Bertrands words before And though some of their Clergy who live under Princes that are not willing to resign their Crowns do disclaim the Popes direct Title to the Universal Civil Soveraignty yet he himself disclaimeth it not nor condemneth the Books as such that have been written to defend it In the Jesuits Morals the last Chapter hath this Title That the Jesuits teach that the Church cannot command spiritual and internal actions That its Laws and guidance are humane and that it is it self only a Political Body Where the Jansenist chargeth them with destroying the Church from its foundation and making it altogether external humane and Politick and that which needeth only Politick Vertues for its Government and the exercise of its principal offices and that they make its Laws but humane and politick which oblige only to things external and chargeth them as Cyprian did the Novatians Quod Ecclesiam humanam faciunt So that if he accuse them justly here is no room for any subterfuge It is not the Spiritual and Temporal power that he makes them claim but the Temporal or External only But what doth the Jansenist himself therefore disclaim all Temporal Power in the Church or is he just to Kings Judge but by pag. 388. where he boasteth of Laymans Confession of the Truth that Ecclesiastick power is instituted immediately from God and the Civil power comes immediately from men And that Civil power regards properly and directly wealth and peace temporal only And he adds For the Civil power regards the outward order and Civil tranquility alone and prescribes none but outward and humane means to attain this end Which is all false and most injurious to Kings whom this moderate Jansenist would hereby set as far below every Priest in real dignity and amiableness to the Subjects as a Humane Creature is below a Divine and the interest of the body is below that of the soul. Whereas indeed God is the immediate Original of Civil and Church power though in both the Persons are designed by the means of men And both have God himself for their ultimate end and the Common Good of the Society for their Common End which ever consisteth most in spiritual felicity referring to Eternal Though the Magistrates weapon be the Sword and the Pastors only the Word by which all this is brought to pass Indeed it is not possible that the Papacy in its present State can be defended by any man how moderate soever without Injury to Princes and States whose Power the Pope hath so notoriously invaded and usurped For how can they defend him that usurpeth the Power of Kings or usurpeth a false Power over Kings and not be injurious to them that the Usurper injureth But it is most wonderful to me that when W. Barclay defendeth the right of Monarchs in such a Kingdom as France that hath power and will to hold fast its own he should complain as if he undertook a Cause which most were against him in and in which he expected to be wondered at for his singularity 4. By their Inquisition and by their Decreeing Corporal Penalties in their Councils and Decreeing the deposition of Princes and the giving away their Dominions to others as in the two fore-cited Councils Roman suâ— Greg. 7. Lateran sub Innoc. 3. In a word by all that they do in their Usurped Legislation Judgement and Execution by the Sword or a forcing Power as in themselves II. But the more successful Usurpation of the Power and Rights of Princes is Indirectly and as Bellarmin defendeth it in ordine ad spiritualia By using their Ecclesiastical Usurped power upon mens Consciences in such a way as shall overtop the Magistrates power of the Sword when they decree that all are Hereticks that believe their senses and deny Transubstantiation and that all such Hereticks shall be banished or burnt the Clergy is not to do this themselves but to deliver them over to the Secular Power The Pope and Clergy do but charge it on their Consciences in the name of Christ. And if Princes obey them not or Temporal Lords will not burn or banish all such Hereticks for believing sense the Pope is not to touch their bodies but to excommunicate them And if they will not yet obey the Pope when they are excommunicate the Pope Good man will not draw a Sword against them but only use the Spiritual Sword by giving their Dominions to others which is but by word of mouth he doth but declare such a Temporal Lord to be dispossest of his Title and require another to take his Lands and let his great Divines publish that an Excommunicate King is no King and that to kill him is not to kill a King And if Princes will defend themselves by Arms the Pope will not send his Clergy in Arms against them but only by the Spiritual Sword or Word command other Princes States and people to arm themselves against their
difference as Christ hath appointed us to make And doth our Baptismal Covenant contain no promise and profession of godliness and obedience as well as of Belief and so of Repentance and a better life 2. Who would you have to be Judge in this matter Shall every one be Judge himself Then all Pagans Murderers Blasphemers may come in and turn Religion and the Church into a scorn If any must judge you would not sure set the Magistrates or people such a task on pain of damnation to leave their Calling to try and judge of the qualifications of expectants or Church-members 3. Whom do you think Christ committed this business to Who were the Judges of the Capacity of persons to be baptized or the desert of persons to be rejected Diotrophes could not have rejected Christians injuriously if he had not then had some Governing power 4. Hath not all Christs Church exercised such a Discipline as I have described since the Apostles days till now saving the corruption of it by ill additions or carnal neglects And hath all this Church been from the beginning under a false Government in the main Or is not Reformation a righter way than extirpation of Discipline as well as of Doctrine and Worship 5. Is it not the wickedness of Christians that is the chief hardening of Turks and other Infidels against Christianity And would they not encrease this pollution that would have the most vicious to be equally received with the best 6. Is not Faith for Holiness and did not Christ come to purifie a peculiar people and restore us to the Image of God And if for want of Discipline Saints and Swine be equally Church-members and partakers of holy things is that agreeable to this design of our Redeemer 7. If Oeconomical Government and School Government and Colledge Government be no wrong to Kings neither is the Church Government which Christ hath instituted I do not say all this to intimate that you say the contrary But because your Charge on Luther Calvin and other Protestants sheweth that you do sure mistake them And to tell you that I joyn with you in disowning the KINGDOM and Magistracy of the Mock-Church of Rome and of all that will imitate them But that I take the Enmity to and grosse neglect of true Church-Discipline to be one of Satans principal services that is done him upon earth against true Godliness The Churches and the Magistrates Power stated in matters of Religion In an hundred Propositions which almost all sober Protestant Teachers are agreed in A Reconciliation of the sober Episcopal Presbyterians Independents and Erastians To my very Learned sincere and worthy Friend Ludovicus Molinaeus Dr. of Physick The Author of many Treatises on this subject Dear Sir UPON the perusal of your Writings which you sent me the love of the Church and of Truth and Peace and you doth command me to tell you as followeth 1. That I make no question but that the Pride of the Clergy with their Covetousness hath for above twelve hundred years been a greater plague to the Churches throughout the Christian world than all the cruelties of the Laity And that the sensless forgetting the matter and manner of Christs decision of his Apostles Controversie Which of them should be the greatest hath divided the East and West and corrupted and kept down Religion whilest that the lives of the Prelates have perswaded the observers that they still took it for a more important Question Which of them should be the greatest than Whether they or their people should be saved And it hath ever been a matter of easie remarque that there have been seldom any dangerous Schisms on one side or any cruel Persecutions on the other side which the Clergy have not been the principal causes of And that the Laity would be more quiet if the Clergy did not delude them or exasperate them And that even the more mistaken and violent sort of Magistrates would have some moderation in their Persecutions if the Clergy did not make them believe that a burning killing Zeal is the mark of a good Christian and is the same that in Tit. 2. 14. is called a zeal of good works and that to destroy the bodies of men truly fearing God is the way to save their own souls or their Dominions at least when indeed the zeal of Christs commanding is a zealous Love to one another and a zealous doing good to others and the Devilish zeal as St. James distinguisheth it James 2. 15 16 17. is an envious hating hurting zeal 2. That in all this the Laity are not innocent but must thank themselves for the evil that befalleth them and that on two notable accounts 1. Because they have ordinarily the choosing of the dignified and beneficed Churchmen and they have but such as they choose themselves They think it is their wisdom as well as piety to make the Honour and Profit so great as shall be a very strong bait to Pride and Covetousness And when they have so done the Proudest and most Covetous will certainly be the Seekers and that with as much craft and diligence as an ambitious mind can use their parts to And he that seeketh by himself and friends is likest to find And the more humble and heavenly any one is and consequently most honest and fit to be a Pastor of the Church the further he will be from the Seekers way So that except it be where the world hath Rulers so wise and strangely pious as to seek out the worthy who seek not for themselves its easie to prognosticate what kind of Pastors the Church will have And verily they that choose them are the unfittest to complain of them Whereas if the Churches maintenance were such as might but prevent the discouragements of such as seek the Ministry for the works sake and for the love of souls that so Students might not make it a Trade for wealth but a self-denying dedication of themselves to God the Churches would be accordingly provided And they that intend the saving of souls would be the Candidates by their own and their Parents dedication as now they that intend a Trade to live and serve the flesh by in an honourable way are too great a part of them Or men might be further rewarded ex post facto for their Merits without being tempted to study principally for that reward And if we will needs have carnal men let us not wonder if they live carnally And if the carnal mind be enmity to God and neither is nor can be subject to his Law Rom. 8. 6 7. we may easily prognosticate how Christs enemies will do his work and guide his Church and whether their wills and wayes will be such as the conscionable can conform to 3. And the Laity are unexcusable because it is they in all those Countreys where Popery and Church-tyranny prevaileth who put their Sword into the Clergies hands and give away their own authority and set up men to vie