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
they would give that power of Ordination to them which they took for the most characteristical distinctive for the most incommunicable Prerogative of the Bishop over Presbyters Is it probable that they would have been so partial against their own common interest to betray the honour of their Order Is it probable that they would do so when they were as firmly perswaded that it was their right in Conscience as well as that it was their interest that it should be so Nay have we not all the assurance on the contrary that either Interest or Conscience can give us that those Bishops never intended to give the power of Ordination to the Presbyters ordeined by them nay that they intended on the contrary to reserve it from them And is not this as great an assurance as can be expected in such a matter CHAP. XXIII What influence the Opinion which prevailed in the modern Schools That Bishops and Presbyters differed not Order but in Degree might have upon the intention of the Ordeiners of those times THE CONTENTS § I The Objection Answ. 1. It seems rather to have been Interest than Conscience that inclined men to the belief of this Opinion This cleared from a short History of this Opinion § I II III IV V. Answ. 2. Though this Opinion had been received more universally than it appears it was by the Multitude yet it is not likely that it would be so received by the Bishops upon whose Intention the validity of the Orders conferred by them must depend § VI. Answ. 3. Though the Bishops of those Ages had been universally of this Opinion yet it does not thence follow that they must have given to the Presbyters ordeined by them the power of 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 those Persons proceeded in making one 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 THE only considerable Objection that I can foresee in this matter is the opinion which then obteined among some of the modern School-men that Bishops and Presbyters were all one Order and differed only in degree that the consecration of a Bishop did not give him a new Character but extend the old one which he had received before when he was ordeined Presbyter and the influence that this opinion might have on the Practice of those Bishops if any such there were who then believed it to give the whole essential power of Bishops to those whom they ordeined Presbyters yet so as to restrain them in the practice of it by their Canonical Obedience I do not take all the advantages I might against this opinion as it was maintained in those Ages to shew that it is too suspicious that it was rather pique than Conscience that then brought men to it Whenever it was vented it seems to have been vented with particular design and particular provocation Not to ascend to the more knowing times for in truth I am not desirous to touch the reputation any men have gained in the World where it may be spared with the interest of Truth that is indeed where errors have not been introduced into the World by the Authority of men of undeserved reputation and there sure none can blame me for complying with so unpleasing a necessity The first time that it was retrieved after St. Hierome seems to have been in the eighth Century and then with a particular design upon the Chorepiscopi whose power was then maligned as derogatory to the Ordinaries And the wisest course for reducing them and withal the least invidious was thought to be not so much directly to magnifie the power of the Ordinary as to magnifie the dignity of them who had been subject to the Chorepiscopi which they endeavoured not only by degrading the Chorepiscopus to the orders of a Presbyter but by extolling the office of a Presbyter to an equality in some regards with the Bishops to whom they the Chorepiscopus himself as well as other Presbyters were obliged to pay obedience as indeed he was All this dispute was nothing but pure design and how very disingenuously it was managed appears from the several Epistles of antient Popes counterfeited in that Age for this very purpose to prove the Chorepiscopi to have been simple Presbyters which may justly make us jealous of the integrity of the same party in this other principle which they advanced in opposition to it § II HAVING therefore gained their design in the subversion of this Office and the Bishops themselves not being hitherto concerned to oppose this opinion whilest it was so favourable to their interests and whilest it added to their power by the ruin of so considerable a Rival though we have reason to believe that this usefulness of the Opinion must have endeared it to the Affections of those who had served themselves by it yet we find little mention of it from that time till it became again useful That was when the Popes aspired to a Superiority above all Bishops and Councils Then it was that Dispensations and Delegations grew frequent so that nothing was performable by the Bishop by vertue of his Office but what was communicated to simple Presbyters by Papal Delegations This as it highly tended to the advancement of the Roman See so we may have reason to believe that all the Arts of the Roman Court and its Parasites were employed in promoting it And there was no more likely policy for it than this to make use of the same way for the subversion of the Episcopal Power which the Bishops themselves had before been so favourable to when it was used against the Chorepiscopi Which was a policy of the same kind with that which that politick See had made use of in their disputes with the Patriarch of Constantinople They then seemed not so much concerned for his equalling himself with them as for his preferring himself before the other Patriarchs This they knew to be a more popular Art to make him odious without discovering their own ambition And in our present case we know that this was the reason that made the Papal Bishops even in the Council of Trent so averse to the asserting the Divine institution of their own order And this I believe our Brethren themselves will confess to have been a very corrupt design And yet in these unhappy times whilest this ill design was driving on the School-men flourished of whose suffrages they are so proud in this particular § III AND as the Pope was thus interested to oppress the Episcopal Authority whilest it was capable to stand in competition with him so when afterwards the generality
Damasus wherein he so extols the See of Rome seems to have recommended him to the counterfeiter of the Roman Council under the name of Gelasius not long before the time of Isidore Mercator as the Authority of that Council in Isidore's Collection might recommend him downwards as soon as that bundle of Forgeries had once prevailed universally All the use that I make at present of these insinuations is that if it be suspicious whether the men who then followed these Principles did embrace them out of a sincere sense of their Truth then they cannot be presumed to have been Principles of Conscience Which if they were not this is sufficient to shew that they are not fit measures of the Power that was actually given by the Bishops of that Age. § VI AND though they had been received more universally than it appears they were among the Multitude yet how is it likely that it was so received among the Bishops themselves Is it likely that they would be generally so partial to an Opinion so destructive of their common rights as Bishops Is it likely that they would be so partial when there was no evident prevailing consideration in point of Conscience that might induce them to it when it was a matter of dispute even among disinterested Persons and debated by Arguments and Authorities at least as considerable on their side as on the others If any particular Bishops had been so strangely partial against themselves and thought themselves obliged in Conscience to be so yet sure there is no reason to make use of it as a presumption to judg of the minds of them who had not otherwise declared their minds expresly and to judg of them universally And yet it has appeared that the whole use of this opinion for judging what Power was actually given is only as a presumption and even this presumption is useless concerning others than the Bishops None but they pretended to the Power of giving Orders at least not to the exercise of that Power And therefore whatever any else thought besides the Bishops is very impertinent to our present purpose because it can give us no assurance what was actually intended by the Bishops and it is only their intention by which we can in prudence judg what Power was actually given by them § VII BUT let us suppose that which in prudence can never be supposed that the Bishops of those Ages were universally of this opinion that their own Order was the same with that of Presbyters yet it does not thence follow that they must have given Presbyters the Power of Ordination It neither follows from the Notions of those times nor from the reason of the thing And sure we cannot better judg of a matter of this nature than by one of these two ways It does not follow from the Notions of those times For even they who thought them to be the same Order yet made them different degrees and that not only from the custom of the Church but by Divine Right also But it could not have appeared how they could distinguish them even in degree but by allowing something in practice to the Superior degree as a peculiar Prerogative and there was nothing thought so a So Epiphanius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hâ—res lxxv 4 And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ib. And St. Chrysostome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 init Hom. ii in 1. ad Tim. p. 289. peculiar to the Episcopal degree as this power of Ordination This was the very particular excepted by St. Hierome b Quid enim facit exceptâ Ordinatione Episcopus quod Presbyter non faciat Ep. 85. ad Euagr. himself even where he most of all pleads for parity in other things I know there are of our Brethren who understand St. Hierome's words not of the original right of appropriating ordination to them as left to them by the Apostles but of a priviledg actually allowed them by the practice of the Church in that Age wherein he wrote which I shall not now dispute It suffices that he made no mention of Ordination among the instances of their parity nay that he expresly excepts this particular among his other proofs of the identity of their Office without telling expresly on what right it was that he made the exception which were very fair occasions to induce them to believe that he did not intend to give them the power of Ordination especially when it was withal notorious and confessed by himself that he lived in the Communion of a Church wherein Presbyters were debarred from the exercise of this Power It suffices that they who in that Age followed his Authority were not obliged by any of their designs in promoting his opinion to understand him of a parity in the power of Ordination nay never seem actually to have understood him so whatever other sense has been applied to him by those who have more subtilly considered him in our present Age. It is not St. Hierome's true opinion that I am now concerned for but that of those who might then have followed him If they never understood him of a parity between Bishops and Presbyters in the power of ordination If they did not really believe them equal in this particular if they actually believed that this distinction of degree was from the Apostles and that this power of ordination was the peculiar Prerogative of the Superior degree then certainly they who then followed St. Hierome might notwithstanding if they maintained these things also together with his opinion thinks themselves obliged never to give the power of ordination to the Presbyters that were then ordeined by them So far our Brethren are from any solid ground of a presumption that such a thing was ever intended for them § VIII AND as this consequence was far from being owned in the actual sense of those times so neither will it indeed follow from the opinion of these Persons that simple Presbyters had any right to a power of Ordination Though they believed Episcopacy to be the same Order with Presbytery yet their acknowledging a difference in degree was enough to hinder them from confounding the peculiar rights of the several degrees and this we see was taken for the peculiar right of Episcopacy Though they conceived no new Character to have been imprinted in the Consecration of a Bishop yet withal they confessed that the Character of his Presbytery was extended And why may not this extension extend his Power also at least to some Acts to which he had not Power before Nay certainly this very thing was intended by them that it should actually do so And if so then certainly this extended Power must have implied an addition of Power above what was in it before it was so extended Whence it will plainly follow that this Power of Ordination to which the Episcopal Character was extended was wanting in them whilest they were simple Presbyters that is before it was so extended And therefore they who were of
this Opinion could not think themselves obliged to give this Power to simple Presbyters As to the Canonical exercise of their Power Presbyters still depended on their Bishops even in things not exceeding their Power as Presbyters But when a simple Presbyter was licensed to Preach or hear Confessions this was not properly called an extension of his Character By which it seems most likely that by this extension of the Character they did not only mean a Canonical Liberty to exercise more Acts of the same Power which they supposed them to have received before but an addition of a new branch of Power which because Presbyters want if they presume to exercise it their doing so must prove not only Vncanonical but invalid Though they believed the substance of the Power to have been the same yet certainly the least that could have been meant by the difference of Degree between Bishops and Presbyters must have been that Bishops had that same Power independently which the Presbyters had dependently on the Bishops as to the exercise of it Undoubtedly this they did grant who held this Opinion of St. Hierome in the greatest rigor in those Ages I am speaking of if they did not grant something more And yet this is sufficient for my present design both to shew why these very Persons might not have thought it fit to give this power of Ordination to simple Presbyters and why it is very rational for us also to presume that they did not actually give it them § IX FOR by the fundamental Principles of all Societies the Power of giving Power to others is still reserved as a Prerogative of him who has that same Power independently And the reason of it is very plain as to both parts as to him that has the Power dependently and as to him who has it independently He who has the Power of administring the Sacraments yet so as to depend on the Authority of another in the exercising of that Power cannot therefore with any Justice make a valid conveyance of that Power to another because he cannot himself be taken for an absolute Master of that Power Though the Power it self be given irrevocably yet while it is given with the condition of dependence is cannot be alienable by the Person to whom it is given without the givers consent because the right of alienation supposes a property of our own and dependence implies a reservation of right to him on whom we do depend which right as it is absolutely necessary to an intire alienation so it cannot with any Justice or validity be disposed of without the consent of him whose property it is Besides that giving of Power does plainly belong to the exercise of Power and to a higher degree of exercise of it than that of the exercise of the Power so given as it implies a greater Power to give a Power which includes a capacity of all the Acts belonging to it than only to give a liberty to exercise a particular Act. And therefore he who has not a just title to give way to the exercise of the Power so given can be much less supposed to have one to that higher exercise of Power by which the Power it self is disposed of It is also clear as to him that has the Power independently It is necessary for Government that all others do depend on those who are themselves supposed independent But this cannot be understood unless the independent Power alone be allowed the Power of admitting to Office whom he pleases If others may be allowed to give their Power they will soon make themselves independent if they were not so at first by making a party and perpetuating it But because this whole Power of giving Power in the Persons I am speaking of is so eternally irreconcilable with the safety of Societies therefore it is fit it should never be given them and therefore in the way of presumption for which I am at present concerned it is to be presumed that it never was intended for them § X BUT if our Brethren would be pleased to reflect on the Principles on which these Persons proceeded in making one Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery they would find that they did not in the least oblige them to believe that this Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters The plain reason was that they made their distinction of Orders only in relation to the Sacrament of the Eucharist And because simple Priests had the full Power of this Sacrament of consecrating as well as of administring it so that there was nothing higher requisite for the completion of this solemnity reserved to the Bishop nor capable of being reserved to him therefore there was on this account no room left for any Order above Priesthood And because this Power of transubstantiating the Eucharistical Elements was then looked on as the highest instance of Power that could be communicated to Mortals because this was thought sufficient to exempt from all Subjection to temporal Princes nay to place the Spiritual Power above the Princes and yet in this instance of Power which had been so extremely extolled in the Disputes of those Ages between the Popes and Princes the Bishops could pretend to do no more than what was performable by every ordinary Priest therefore it can be no wonder if in this regard many of them could not allow any Order superior to that of simple Priesthood He that is but a little conversant in the writings of that Age will find that as the Doctrine of Transubstantiation was very eagerly mainteined as the great recommendation of the Sacred Power in those Disputes which were then raised concerning it so it is particularly urged for the honour of Presbytery as often as they were put upon magnifying their Office And this I therefore take in earnest to have been the true reason that inclined those of the Writers of that Age that followed this Opinion rather than the pretended instances of Scripture or even the Authority of St. Hierome himself For these were Principles for which as they were more firmly interested so I believe they were also much more heartily believed in that Age than any on◠particular controverted sense of Scripture recommended on the Authority of one particular Father And therefore whatever Superiority of Bishops over Priests was reconcilable with this allowance of a Power of consecrating the Eucharist to simple Priests all this might have been acknowledged by these very Persons notwithstanding their making them the same Order And considering that this Power of Ordination was thus reconcilable this Opinion could not hinder those Persons from appropriating it to the Bishops § XI FOR notwithstanding this Power of the Priesthood over the Corpus Christi verum was thought common to them with the Bishops yet the Power over the Corpus Christi Mysticum this was the language of those Ages was then acknowledged for the peculiar right of the Bishops And what can our Adversaries think themselves gainers
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 BUT though we should suppose those Persons then to have been altogether of the same mind which they conceive those to have been of who lived in the Apostles times though we suppose not only that they thought it fit that the whole power of the Bishop should be given to Presbyters but that they had actually given it them suppose we that the Bishop had no more Authority reserved to him than only to preside in their Assemblies that is to call them and to fit in the first place of them when they were convened that is supposing that the Bishops Authority were no more than what was consistent with the Aristocratical form of Government which they conceive to have been observed in the Primitive times though this supposition be notoriously false concerning the Ages I am speaking of yet I do not see how even this way our Brethren can defend the validity of their Ordinations by single Presbyters especially as it is practised among them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no power can be given I do not mean only that it cannot be given Canonically but that it cannot be given validly but to Persons who are at least in conjunction with those from whom they receive their power then at least when they actually receive it Which will consequently null all the Ordinations which have been made in the state of separation and will therefore make it impossible for any Schism which is made by single Presbyters in the way that has been observed by our Adversaries to maintein it self with any pretence of Authority beyond one generation And this must sure be very acceptable to those generous Spirits who are more solicitous for Catholick Vnity than for the party in which they were born § II AND that this is so I shall endeavour to prove in two regards in regard of the power that must be allowed to the Bishop even as the President of these Assemblies and in regard of that which must be allowed to other Presbyters as fellow-members of the same Assemblies 1. In regard of the power of the Bishop as President of those Assemblies For by the Fundamental Principles even of Aristocratical Government it is certain 1. That no power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated that is in our case of the whole Presbytery It is against the interest of all Societies and the principles of all Government that single Members even of those who have otherwise power in conjunction with others to dispose of the Government of a Society should be allowed the power of disposing of it in their single capacities But it is peculiarly against the right of a Polyarchical Government because no particular Member has the right of the whole Society and therefore cannot dispose of the Government of it which whether it be supreme or subordinate must imply either a power over the whole Society or a power necessarily derived from that which is so Even subordinate Authority must be derived from the supreme that there may be such an essential dependence upon it as is necessary for the safety of all Societies This will therefore make it a Nullity in the thing if single Members do presume to dispose of that which is not their own right alone but the right of the whole Body § III AND 2. As by the nature of this Government the right of it must be supposed to be in the whole Body so neither can any act be presumed to be the act of the whole Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies Though every particular Member for himself should signifie his own consent yet it is not taken for the act of the Society till it be also signified in an Assembly and it is taken for the act of the whole Society if it pass them in their Assembly though without the consent of every particular Person so it have the prevailing vote nay though that prevailing vote be not the greater part of the Society so it be only of the greater part of those which are present in such Assemblies For the reason of this I say no more at present but that it is found necessary for all Multitudes to agree on these Rules for settling Assemblies and for giving this power to what is done in such Assemblies to conclude the whole Societies and to the prevailing vote of those Assemblies to conclude the whole Assemblies before they can pass out of the state of a Multitude into that of a Society that is before they can have any Government that can solidly unite them at least before they can have any Government that can be practicable The same reasons which make this fit to be agreed on in any one Society are common to all Societies as Societies and therefore must be allowed the same force in those that are Ecclesiastical as in those that are Civil as they are capable of being administred in this Life And therefore God himself cannot be supposed to have made a Government even of his own institution practicable till he have settled these Rules of administring it And when they are once settled however they come to be so whether by Gods own appointment or by the consent of the People it will then be very just as well as fit to conclude that what is done on pretence of the right of the Society out of such an Assembly cannot validly confer any right of the Society because on the Principles of the agreement on these Assemblies they are not to be reputed as acts of the Society And certainly as nothing but the Society it self can in Justice make a valid conveyance of its own right so it is not conceivable how the Society it self can do it by any thing but its own act Besides the very reason of agreeing on these Assemblies as the most convenient means for administring the power of the Society seems to be purposely to preclude all surreptitious acts that might be pretended in the name of the Society if designing men might be allowed in their pretences concerning what might be transacted privately And therefore the main
mentioned For grant this power of perpetual presiding to the Bishops and it will then follow that the right of convening Ecclesiastical Assemblies will belong to them Therefore those Assemblies which meet without their Calling as all those must do which meet out of their Communion can be no lawful Assemblies But the acts of unlawful Assemblies though otherwise consisting of such Persons as had a real power in lawful ones are Nullities can oblige the Society to nothing much less can they dispose of a thing of so great moment to them as their power They are not only Nullities but offences of that nature as that they are so far from obliging the Societies in any equity to confirm them as that they do oblige them by the highest common interest to punish them Which plainly shews that though Presbyters had been allowed a power of Ordination yet they could not validly exercise it out of the Episcopal Communion and therefore that whatever may be said to that Question yet that cannot make it questionable whether the Orders of our present Adversaries be valid § XI THIS right of presiding in the Assemblies was a thing which the highest Asserters of the Identity of Order between Bishops and Presbyters in the modern Ages I am speaking of did undoubtedly never think the Bishops obliged to renounce Nor could any Bishop how heartily soever he believed that opinion be presumed to give the Presbyters ordeined by him a power of meeting without his leave when themselves pleased And yet undoubtedly the Bishops were actually possessed of that power by a peaceable prescription of many Centuries and by the consent of the Presbyters themselves who lived in them so that the Presbyters then ordeined could lay no claim to it without an express gift from the Bishops who ordeined them because they never had that power nor were there any remaining then who could give it them besides the Bishops And indeed the Bishops could not renounce this power without dissolving the Society by making the exercise of Government unpracticable or without changing the whole frame of Government For supposing they had renounâ—ed this right who must have had it If none had it how could the Society be secured that Assemblies should meet if none had power to call them if non had power to oblige particular Members to be present at them when called If any particular Presbyter had been intrusted with it that had only been an alteration of the Person not of the right of the Office The new intrusted Presbyter would thereby become the Bishop by what name soever they would be pleased to call him and all the change that ordinary Presbyters would find by such an act would be only of their Master not of their subjection If it had been given away indefinitely no particular Presbyter could lay a better claim to it than all his Brethren and by all it is not practicable till they be considered as convened in an Assembly If it had therefore been given to the whole Assembly either they must thenceforth have stated times allotted them for meeting or every meeting must be allowed to adjourn themselves and to appoint the time and place for meeting again If at any time no meeting were ascertained the Government would be dissolved This is indeed the way practised in Peliarchical Governments but such a resignation of the Bishop as this must therefore have altered the very frame of the Government And where can our Adversaries give any precedent either in Catholick Tradition or even in the times of the Scripture it self wherein any such thing was practised by Presbyteries Where was it ever heard that they called or adjourned themselves without the Authority of the President of their Assemblies by what name soever our Brethren will be pleased to call them § XII NOR am I concerned by my present interest how the Bishops came by their power of presiding whether by the Election of their Clergy or People or whether by a new consecration by Bishops only Let the guesses of St. Hierome the counterfeit Ambrose and Eutychius be as true as our Adversaries can wish them Let it be so that the Bishops received no new Consecration of their own Order that no men but the Presbyters were concerned in giving their power to them Our Adversaries usually think they have performed a great matter when they have produced these conjectures of these Authors And yet when they have made all they can of them they are no better than conjectures These Authors lived too far from the times they speak of to assure us of any thing Historically Nor do they pretend to any Histories we know not of that might put us in any hope that they speak what they say on better grounds than eonjecture Yet these are the only grounds of all that our Adversaries say positively in this matter But I say granting that these conjectures were true and that not only the ancient Bishops but the Bishops of the Ages we are speaking of had no new consecration nor consequently had any new power from what they were capable of receiving by the Canonical Election of their Clergy and granting therefore that all the further power they pretend to by their Consecration is no just accession of power and therefore none at all I do not see how even by this power which they may receive by their Election our Adversaries can defend the validity of their present Ordinations For what if the Bishop had received his power from the Presbyters Does it therefore follow that the Presbyteries must not depend on him when he has received it Does it follow that they must still have power as freely as formerly to assemble themselves without his leave and either to depose him or to set up another in his stead or at least to erect themselves an independent Body on any Superior Does it follow that such practices of theirs would be valid if they should attempt them § XIII NAY the very contrary has been taken hitherto for the only solid security of peace in all prudent humane establishments In all elective Kingdoms the Interreges have a power during the vacancy to dispose of the affairs of the Kingdom till a new King be elected But they as well as other Subjects would be guilty of Treason if they should attempt the same things afterwards Their Assemblies would be as illegal and their proceedings in them of as little validity as those of other Subjects So in St. Hieromes instance Ep. ad Euagr. the Army chose the Emperor and when he was so chosen he was not invested in his power by any Authority superior to that of the Army Yet that power of the Army expired as soon as he was once peaceably settled in the power received from them They could not then meet as they had done formerly If they did such meetings were thenceforwards illegal and their proceedings null Much less could they justifie a revolt from him or validly defend their
independence on him Nay the Emperour Valentinian though he was chosen by the Army yet when he was chosen he would not endure to be obliged by them even to the nomination of a Colleague though he after did it freely So though the Presbyteries had a power in the vacancy of Sees to do all things necessary for the Succession of a new Bishop yet by the Rules of all successive Governments they can only be supposed to have it in trust and that trust must be presumed limited according to the design of the power by which it was committed to them It does not therefore follow that they can forbear the Election of a Successor and much less that they can justifie their Assembling and Acting without him when he is once named Their power may then for all this expire and they return to the condition of ordinary Subjects whose acts I believe our Adversaries themselves cannot think valid if they presume to give Authority And the reason is plain because they cannot be supposed still to have the power after they have given it out of their own hands And therefore afterwards they can neither validly exercise it nor validly dispose of it otherwise against the fundamental Laws for settling Succession in the Society for which they are supposed to be intrusted § XIV THIS Argument will hold though this right of Presidency were purely humane Yet even so Persons who have given the power out of their own hands cannot recall it again at pleasure but must be obliged to stand to their own act And as this will oblige such as were at first free if any were such in matters alienable by them and those by whom the Laws for Succession were first made so much more will it oblige posterity who must find themselves already confined by the acts of their Predecessors These can pretend only such a right as they have received and therefore if they exceed that they usurp a right which was never theirs and therefore all they do must be invalid Indeed if the supreme right of managing their own Assemblies had been by divine right unalienable from the Primitive Presbyters they who once had it might therefore challenge it again notwithstanding any Contracts whatsoever for parting with it because the Contracts themselves were invalid and therefore could not deprive them of a right which they had before they made those Contracts but must leave them in the same condition wherein they found them But what is that to Posterity Suppose the modern Presbyters of the Ages I am speaking of had never given their â—ishops the power of presiding over their Assemblies Suppose we that they were not obliged to stand to the Contracts of their Predecessors in this matter All that would thence follow is only this that they are now in the same condition as if those Contracts had never been made But though they have not alienated a right that does not prove they have it unless they had it antecedently to the alienation But that is a thing posterity cannot pretend to They never had this right given them and therefore cannot pretend to have it though they never alienated it And they are at least thus far obliged by the acts of their predecessors as they were thereby hindred from having this power given them whether they be or be not obliged by those acts of theirs which may pretend to have alienated it from them And till our Brethrens Predecessors who were then ordeined can prove that they once had this right given them I shall not be concerned whether they have alienated it or not nor consequently whether they be bound to stand to the alienation of their Predecessors § XV BUT if the power of Episcopacy be Divine and all that men can do in the Case be only to determine the Person not to confine his power then certainly it will follow that though men may this way make him which is all our Brethren can pretend to prove yet they may not therefore after he is made either deprive him or make another or exercise the Government themselves without him as freely as before For as soon as that power is given him by God they immediately become his Subjects and have then no more power to prescribe limits to his Authority than they have to do so to the Authority of God himself Nor am I here obliged to take the advantage I might take from the peculiar way by which I have proved Ecclesiastical power to be derived from God It is sufficient for my purpose that it be no otherwise from God than that is of every supreme Civil Magistrate It is not usual for Kings to be invested in their Office by other Kings but by their Subjects Yet when they are invested that does not in the least prejudice the absoluteness of their Monarchy where the fundamental constitutions of the respective places allow it them much less does it give any power over them to the Persons by whom they are invested But they are then and afterwards as much his Subjects as any others are who have no part in the Solemnity And therefore though it had been true that the Presbyters at first had not only elected but placed the Bishop over themselves as St. Hierome expresses it nay supposing those same Presbyters who had chosen him should have also used all the ceremonies of Consecration to him that they had invested him in his Office by Prayer and Imposition of hands Eutych Annal. Alex. Ed. Oxon. p. 31. as Eutychius pretends nay supposing that no Bishops had any more to do in his Consecration than Kings have to do in the Inaugurations of our ordinary Kings all this I say being supposed which is more than they can prove by any competent testimony it will not thence follow that those same Presbyters who chose and Consecrated him must have any more power over him or to act any thing without him or to withdraw their obedience from him after he is so chosen and Consecrated than those same Persons have over the Princes who are Inaugurated by them and all their presumptuous practices of such a power may notwithstanding all this be not only as punishable but as invalid as the like presumptions would be in the Inaugurations of Princes Nor is it only true that this may be so though that alone be sufficient to weaken our Adversaries confidence in this way of arguing but indeed it must be so whenever the Person so invested is supposed to be invested in the supreme power and whenever the Society over which he is placed is also independent on all other Societies Such a Person can never be placed in his power if he may not be placed in it by them who after he is placed in it must themselves be his Subjects as much as others unless he be placed in it by his Predecessor which no Society can safely depend on for a constant Rule of Succession In his own Society he can therefore have none of
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
§ I Separation of Churches FROM EPISCOPAL GOVERNMENT As practised by the present Non-Conformists PROVED SCHISMATICAL From such Principles as are least controverted and do withal most popularly explain The Sinfulness and Mischief OF SCHISM In this Treatise The Sin against the Holy Ghost the Sin unto Death and other difficult Scriptures are occasionally discoursed of and some useful Rules are given for EXPLICATION of SCRIPTVRE By HENRY DODWELL M.A. and sometimes Fellow of Trinity-College near Dublin in Ireland 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ign. Ep. ad Ephes. p. 20. Edit Voss. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Ep. ad Corinth §. 30. LONDON Printed for Benjamin Tooke at the Ship in S. Paul's Church-Yard MDCLXXIX THE PREFACE THE interests of those many parties which at present keep up the Divisions of Christendom are so highly concerned in the consequences of my present undertaking And the generality of men are so visibly partial in disputes wherein interest is concerned so much more inclinable to resent the severity of a conclusion that charges them with dangerous mistakes than to think how much indeed it is their interest rather to beware of errors that may prove dangerous than to stand out in the defence of what they have once undertaken to defend and how much it is therefore their interest to examine the premises with all possible accurateness and candor from whence such conclusions are deduced as that I cannot but expect some indications of the resentment of concerned Persons though I have endeavoured that the way of management might be as unoffensive as was possible Though my design be Peace yet that it self is enough to alarm the Spirits of many in the contentious Age we live in who when they are spoken to of peace will make them ready to battle And therefore I cannot but think my self concerned to foresee and prevent such prejudices as may hinder such who most need the informations given in the present Work either from reading them or from benefiting by them § II I MUST therefore warn my Reader in the first place that when he finds the Title promise him a Discourse concerning SCHISM he do not understand it in the same sense as it has been considered in so many modern discourses upon that Subject between us and the Romanists SCHISM not here considered as between Churches but as between particular Members and their own Churches I do not here consider the question of Schism between Churches but between Subjects separating from particular Churches and the Churches from which they separate This is all for which my present design does concern me and if my reasons prove that Subjects separating from their own particular Churches for unsinful Impositions are Schismaticks I shall perform what I intended But the same reasons will not prove a Church Schismatical for refusing impositions though unsinful from another Church For I suppose all Churches originally equal and that they have since submitted to prudential compacts which though they may oblige them as long as the reason of those compacts last and as far as the equity of those compacts may hold as to the true design of those that made them and as far as those compacts have meddled only with the alienable rights of particular Churches yet where any of these conditions fail there the particular Churches are at liberty to resume their antient rights And I suppose the power of judging when these condititions fail to be an unalienable right of particular Churches and not only to judg with the judgment of private discretion but such a judgment as may be an authentick measure of her own practice § III I DO not undertake to prove that these things are so in this discourse I only mention them that the Reader may understand on how different Principles these two questions are to be stated The Romanists can make no advantage of the Principles of this discourse to charge our Church with SCHISM and therefore how far it is from following that if the Non-Conformists be Schismaticks for separating from the Church of England therefore the Church of England must be Schismatical for refusing Communion with the Church of Rome and how far the reasons which I have here used for proving the Non-Conformists Schismatical are from being applicable to such a case of the Church of England I do not now insist upon those reasons which might have been produced to prove that the impositions of the Church of Rome are not unsinful no nor innocent of so high a degree of sin as might be greater than that of a particular Church's refusing correspondence with another The things which I have suggested plainly shew that the case will prove extremely different though we consider them barely as impositions not as sinful impositions And to let our Romish Adversaries know that I have already foreseen the use they would be likely to make of a discourse of this nature and how wary I have therefore been of using any reasons that might prove more than I intended or might hinder us from Principles sufficient for our own defence against them I shall desire them to consult my two short Discourses published with a design to prepare the way for this Work There they will find such principles of defence of our Church against them which will not clash with any thing said here which I verily believe true and which being supposed true I also conceive very sufficient to vindicate our Church from their imputation of SCHISM for our not communicating with them And I know not what they can desire more who will desire no more than what is equal § IV BUT as to the main mischief of SCHISM insisted on in this discourse the Nullity of Orders and Sacraments in the Persons guilty of separation and the consequent Sacriledg of those who shall presume in such a case to administer the Sacraments without sufficient Authority That they cannot charge us with even by their own Principles purely on the account of the separation They cannot deny but that Bishops even according to the design and practice of their own Church when we began our Reformation had all that power given them by them who made them Bishops which was requisite not only for mainteining a Church at present but also for mainteining a Succession in it through all succeeding generations They had the power not only of making other Priests who might administer the Sacraments during their own lives but also of making other Bishops who might convey this power to others Whoever they were that nominated the Persons whether the People or the Clergy or the Prince or the Pope yet still they were the Bishops who performed the office of Consecration which was that which was then thought immediately to confer the power It was then also believed that the Orders given and the Sacraments administred out of the Church by Persons duly Authorized by such as had power to authorize them were valid as to the substance of the things though
of the reasons that required them § XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV The unreasonableness of this way of arguing § XXVI There were then circumstances proper to that Age which required particular condescension § XXVII Though the Negative Argument be not good yet the Positive is that the actual claim of Governours then is a good Presumption that they had a right to the Power so claimed by them § XXVIII Persons extraordinarily gifted at length made subject to the ordinary Governours of the Church § XXIX XXX XXXI This derivation of Power rather from Governours than from the People agreeable to those Precedents whom the Primitive Christians were mâ—st likely to imitate § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV A way proposed for accommodating the several interests concerned in Ordinations according to the practice of those times § XXXVI XXXVII The Apostles unlikely to confer this right of Government on the People if left by God to their own Liberty according to the Notions which then prevailed among the Christians § XXXVIII Remarks tending to the satisfaction of the lovers of Truth and Peace 1. This way of arguing from the actual establishments of God as it is much more modest so it is also more secure for finding out the right of Government than any conjectures we can make from the reason of the thing § XXXIX XL. 2. Though the People had this inherent right of Government originally yet it cannot exclude a right of God who may when be pleases resume this right into his own hands § XLI 3. If the people ever had such a right originally yet all that has been done since for alienating that right which could be done § XLII p. 423. CHAP. XX. 2. This Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God by the Mediation of those men to whom it was at first committed by him The Negative to be proved That none can be presumed to have a call from God without at least an approbation from the Supreme visible Governours § I. 1. It is in reason and by the Principles of visible Government requisite that this Negative be granted for the Conviction of false Pretenders to a Power received from God 1. It is necessary that Pretenders should be discovered § II III IV. 2. It is also requisite that the means of discovering Pretenders be notorious to all even to ordinary capacities § V VI. 3. These notorious means for discovering Pretenders must be common to all Ages of the Church not proper only to that of the Apostles § VII 4. Hence it follows that God left them to the same ordinary means of judging concerning the right of Spiritual Governours as had been used in judging concerning the right of their temporal Superiors § VIII IX 5. By this Rule of judging concerning Spiritual right the same way as we judg concerning temporal none can be presumed to have this Power but they who have received it from them to whom it was at first committed § X XI 6. This Inference will especially hold when access to the Supreme is most difficult § XII XIII This is the case of Ecclesiastical Government § XIV Application to the Principles of a Modern Writer § XV XVI 2. Our Brethren must be obliged in equity to grant this way because they cannot pitch on a more certain way for the tryal of Pretenders § XVII 1. They cannot do it by deriving their Authority from God immediately § XVIII XIX XX. 2. They cannot do it by pretending to receive their Authority immediately from the Scriptures independently on the Act of their ordinary Superiors § XXI An Objection answered § XXII p. 438. CHAP. XXI 3. This Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived from those men to whom it was at first committed to the Age we live in without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from thâ—se who had Authority to give it them § I. 1. This Authority could not be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own times Neither by their own Persons nor by their deed of Gift nor by their Writings § II. 2. It hence follows that the only way they could use for conveying this Authority to others after their decease must be by appointing sufficient Substitutes who might act for them after their departure § III. 3. The same reasons which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey this Power to any who did not live in their own Age do also prove it impossible for any of their Successors to do so § IV V. 4. This Negative Argument will only hold concerning the only substitutes of the Apostles and concerning them it will hold That they who have not received Power from them who are alone substituted by the Apostles to convey their power to others cannot at all receive any power from the Apostles § VI VII VIII IX 5. That this Negative Argument applied to any particular Age will hold concerning the only substitutes remaining in that particular Age. Bishops were the only substitutes of the Apostles then remaining when our Brethren began their Innovations § X. p. 476. CHAP. XXII 4. The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first Dividers of the several parties had never a Power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were ordeined § VIII p. 483. CHAP. XXIII The Objection concerning the Opinion prevailing in the modern Schools that Bishops and Presbyters differed not in Order but Degree Answ. 1. It seems rather to have been Interest than Conscience that inclined men to the belief of this Opinion This cleared from a short History of this Opinion § I II III IV V. Answ. 2. Though this Opinion had been received more universally than it appears it was by the Multitude yet it is not likely that it would be so received by the Bishops upon whose intention the validity of the Orders conferred by them must depend § VI. Answ. 3. Though the Bishops of those Ages had been universally of this Opinion yet it does not thence follow that they must have given the Presbyters ordeined by them the Power of
the present possessors of the power of Government yet that would give no title to the discoverers of that failure and therefore cannot justifie their proceedings on presumption of such a title from Vsurpation and that even in this Case there is no reason to expect that God should supply in equity what they cannot justifie by a Legal claim § XX 1. THEN It is necessary for the security of visible Government as such that a presumptive title be not rejected but on very evident proofs to the contrary By a presumptive title I mean such a one as the first Innovators found settled when they began their Innovations especially if they themselves had formerly submitted to it and found all who might pretend competition with it submitting to it also nay if they found it unanimously received without any accountable appearance of force or fraud in the first Originals of it This was plainly the Case of our Dissenters in relation to Episcopal Government from which they made their Separation They cannot so much as pretend any other place where any other form of Government had been derived in a Succession from the Apostles to those times They can mention no place where the Bishops were not actually possessed of their § V Power with the consent and submission of the Presbyters themselves nay and the people also and indeed of all those who may be pretended to have been injured by them and who had therefore been concerned to interrupt the peaceableness of the prescription which might in time go far to legitimate their enjoyments before so long a time might pass them as might serve for a prescription All Laws of all Societies do presume in favour of such a title § XXI AND allowing it no more than the force of a presumption yet so it self it is the interest of all Government that want of evidence of its original Right be not allowed alone for a sufficient reason for any to call the Justice of it in Question at least not so far to question it as to venture to oppose it in practice It is otherwise Morally impossible that any Government should pass unquestionable to many successions and by how much the more men usually think it better grounded by its long continuance it must indeed be more liable to exception if the inevidence of its original Right be allowed to be a just exception against it Length of time will either obliterate the original Records or make them accidentally obscure in things wherein they were very clear when they were first written by making alterations in the Tongue and Customs and Opinions of the Age then alluded to Which changes though they be insensible in the particular degrees by which they were made yet it cannot be expected otherwise but that they must grow extremely considerable in the process of a long time In this regard it is for the interest of all Societies whatsoever that want of evidence be not allowed for sufficient to question any part of the challenge of the present supreme visible Governours of the Societies without very evident proof to the contrary § XXII AND it cannot be supposed agreeable to Gods will that when God was founding a Society which was to continue through all ages of the World he should make the conveyance of Authority in it to depend on such means as should be Morally impossible to be so conveyed or that the right of Government should in course grow more questionable in those times which should need its being more unquestionable when both Subjects would grow more unruly and a coercive power should be therefore more necessary than it was at first when they were of themselves more dutifully disposed and when withal the ordinary Governours should want those extraordinary Credentials which recommended the Authority of the Apostles and Apostolical Ages Yet this very presumption if it hold will overthrow all that our Adversaries can say to clear themselves from the guilt of Schism They cannot say that the Scripture forbad them the use of their Authority in things indifferent but only that it does not appear to them that it allowed them to use it § XXIII BUT though this inevidence be not allowable by the fundamental principles of Government to question any part of the Authority in those who are truly invested with it yet why will they say may not the inevidence of particular Persons being lawfully invested in the right of Government excuse us from duty to such Persons concerning whom it does not appear that they are our lawful Governours This will serve their purpose For they need not be solicitous concerning their Duty to Government if they may be excused from Duty to all Persons pretending to a right to govern them and there will be no Persons to whom they will be obliged to pay any Duty if this inevidence of the Legal manner of their coming by their Office may be allowed as sufficient to excuse them from their Duty For this the Scripture will not do but it will be further necessary to be acquainted with the History of every particular Persons Ordination and not only of all in this Age but of all in all the Ages which might have passed between this and that of the Apostles especially of all those Persons in each of them from whom our present Orders are derived But this is a thing which no Records are kept of nor if any had been kept are we secure of their conveyance to us at such a distance in an ordinary way or do we think Providence obliged to secure them to us by an extraordinary one It must therefore be granted further by those Principles whereby the conveyance of any Government to Posterity is secured that no inevidence of this kind can excuse Subjects from their Duty even to present Governours especially when it is otherwise known in general that if the Canons and Constitutions of the Church were observed the Persons ordained according to such Canons must have been validly ordained and that all the Ordained as well as the Ordainers were obliged in interest to have the Canons observed without which they must have weakened their title to the benefits and Priviledges of their Orders so uncanonically received § XXIV THESE are such presumptions on which the Successions of all Government and all the Authority of future Governours in the several Ages of Succession do subsist and which no Society allows to be questionable in the Case of any particular Governour without particular express proof of a failure in his particular Case Mat. xxiii 2 3. And certainly the Scribes and Pharisees who in our Saviours time sate in Moses's Chair and are therefore supposed by him to have the Authority of Moses could not possibly make out their Succession at that distance and after so many revolutions of their state and so great miscarriage both of their Discipline and Records which must needs have been occasioned by those Revolutions by greater assurances than these are § XXV I CONFESS
of men must involve their Records in a greater danger of miscarriage than others Besides that this dependence on Records must in the natural course of things make the Government weakest in the later Ages when we are warned to expect the vices of men most outragious and most needing a restraint which makes it very unlikely to have been Gods pleasure that it should depend on them Which will weaken all our Adversaries Arguments either from the less or from the obscurity of those Primitive Records § IX AND that way of tryal must needs be less popular because it resolves it into more Ancient Histories and greater variety of Learning than can reasonably be supposed in popular capacities If therefore Episcopacy alone and Episcopacy in the modern sense be the only Succession of the Apostles which has been kept uninterrupted to our present times the consequence must then be certain that there can be no Apostolical Power in our present Age which is not derived even from our modern Episcopacy § X FOR it is further observable 5. That even for this Negative consequence it is sufficient that the Argument be deduced from the only substitutes that are extant in the Age to which it is applied that whatever is not done by them cannot be supposed to be done by the Apostles themselves For what if the Presbyterian Government had lasted as long as our Adversaries pretend it did What if the Apostles had lest the form of Government different in several places in some Episcopal in some Presbyterian as a very learned Person does conjecture Dr. Stillingfleet Iren. And what if the Presbyteries of those times had indeed the power of Ordination and intended to give that Power to all the particular Presbyters that were ordeined by them then All this would only prove that the Presbyters so ordeined in those times had indeed the Power of Ordination and that all who were then ordeined by them were validly ordeined But it does not therefore follow that the present Ordinations by simple Presbyters is valid also unless it can be still proved that such a Succession of Presbyterian Government has been continued down to our present times and that the Power of Ordination is now also conferred by them on simple Presbyters as they conceive it to have been then If all the Successions of those Presbyterian Governments be long since extinct as most certainly they are now if they ever were in being then it is as vain to revive a title from them now which is impossible to be received from them as it would be to revive the title of the Julian Family to the Roman Empire And therefore they being uncapable of having Successors on this supposition it must follow that the Episcopal Successions are the only Successions now remaining of the Apostolical Power so that neither Presbyters nor Presbyteries can now have any more of the Power of the Apostles than what they can derive from the Episcopal Successions CHAP. XXII The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion THE CONTENTS 4. This Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first dividers of the several parties had never a power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their Circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first Ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were Ordeined § VIII § I 4. THIS Authority is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion This is a plain Corollary from the former Propositions For from thence it has appeared that no Authority can be expected in this present Age but in that Communion where the Succession of Apostolical Power has been continued to this present And that this Succession has been continued to our days in no other but the Episcopal Communion I conceive to be a thing so notorious as that I think our Adversaries themselves will not deny it They do not that I know of pretend the like uninterrupted Succession in any other form of Government § II HENCE it plainly follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government or in any other Communion at present must be derived from the Episcopal especially of that Age wherein the several parties began I suppose therefore that within less than two hundred years since that there was no Church in the world wherein a visible Succession was mainteined from the Apostles times to ours which was not Episcopally governed I suppose also that the first Inventers of the several Sects were at first Members of these Episcopal Churches and received both their Baptism in them and all the Orders they received I need not use that Argument here that they must therefore have received their Authority in the Episcopal Communion because there was then no other Communion that could give this Authority I think our Adversaries themselves as many of them as pretend to a regular Ordination or a valid Succession will not deny but that what Orders were received by them were actually received by their Forefathers in the Episcopal Communion and by Episcopal Authority Let us therefore see whether the Orders so received can make valid what they now do in their several Separations that is whether they can ratifie their Ordinances or their Sacraments or any thing else that concerns them as a Church that is as a Society priviledged with Spiritual Priviledges § III AND here I do not intend to take the advantage I might against the exercise of that Power by these Persons in their separate condition which they had before really and validly received from a just Authority which was able to give it them I make no exceptions as to the validity of that exercise of it much less as to the Canonicalness of it which I know our Adversaries will much less regard The uttermost that can be made of that is only this that such Persons did receive a Power for their own Lives which must expire with their Lives which this present Generation is not concerned for If therefore I can shew that they of this Generation have nothing from them by which they can justifie the validity of their
Mission and consequently the comfort of their Ordinances which must by the foregoing Principles depend on this validity of their Mission this will abundantly answer my design It will let them see that at least in the second Generation no comfort of Church-Ordinances can be had out of the Episcopal Communion Which will both let them see how much their Congregations must fail of being compleat Churches and consequently fail of the comforts and Priviledges of such Churches when they are not able to maintein a Succession and must withal let them of this Generation see at least so many of them as have not Ministers Episcopally ordeined their obligation in interest as well as Conscience to return to the Communion from which they have fallen as they desire all those comforts they might expect by being in a Church And even for them who at present enjoy such Ministers as have had Episcopal Ordination this may also let them see how much better it were to return to the Communion of the Church soon when they must be at length necessitated to return at the death of that particular Minister at least they cannot hope for another ordeined as he is to succeed him and withal how unlikely it is that their Churches should be the only Churches beloved by God when they are in imminent danger of that which God had threatned in the Revelations to those Churches which had provoked him of having their Candlestick removed from them of failing immediately in the next Succession § IV THAT therefore which I am to prove is that neither the first Dividers nor any among them now who have received the Order of Presbytery by Episcopal Authority had ever any such Power given them as might enable them to ordein others on account of their being made only Presbyters Whether they might have given them that Power I am not at present obliged to enquire It suffices at present that they have it not Their not having it is alone sufficient to disanul all they do on supposition of it Nor am I concerned whether they be obliged by God to give with the Order of Presbytery the Power of Ordination No doubt our Adversaries will say that they are so obliged But does it therefore follow that they have actually done it because they are obliged to do it May not the Episcopal Ordeiners fail of this as well as our Adversaries pretend them to have failed of many other Obligations If they do indeed fail and do not actually give them that power of ordeining others which our Adversaries suppose them obliged to give them all that can be said is that their Ordeiners are to blame for it and responsible to God for it not that the Persons ordeined by them have it but that they are wronged of it because it is not given to them And is not the very supposition of their being wronged of it of their not having it given them a certain Argument that actually they have it not unless possibly they suppose that either they may have it without being given or have it from God immediately though they cannot pretend to have it from Persons Authorized by him But both these pretences have been prevented by what has been already discoursed And their not having this Power on what account soever they be hindred from having it is alone sufficient to invalidate all they do that cannot be done without it § V IN order hereunto therefore I suppose 1. That they have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners This plainly appears from what has been already proved that their Ordeiners are they and they alone who have represented Gods Person in dealing with them and God has not appointed any other means of dealing immediately with them in these later Ages and therefore all that Power which can be thought to come to them originally from God must come immediately from their Ordeiners § VI 2. THEREFORE I suppose further that they have actually received from their Superiors nothing but what their Superiors did actually intend to give them One would think this should be very clear that they can receive nothing but what is given them and that nothing can be given but what is intended to be given This is indeed the great design of the equity of the Law to take care that contracts be observed according to the presumable intention of the Parties that made them and the dealing is then thought most fair and equal when all that is given that can be presumed to have been intended by a fair dealer and when nothing more is extorted by the other Party whose interest may make him challenge what was never designed for him nay cannot in any prudence be presumed to have been designed But for my present Cause I am not concerned whether this be true It suffices that nothing be given by them concerning which they may be presumed that they did intend not to give it And though it were possible that supposing the Ordeiners were obliged to give the Power of ordeining others when they made Presbyters the Law might presume that they did actually intend to do so though their secret intentions were to do otherwise because the Law is always charitable to judg the best where there is no evidence to the contrary and therefore might presume in such a case that every man intends really as he is obliged to intend yet still the reason why even in such a case this might be reasonable is not because they can be supposed to give what they never intend to give but because they may in this way of proceeding be presumed to intend what they do not really intend which is still very reconcilable with what I say that their gift is to be measured by their presumed intention And therefore to prevent all possible exceptions of this kind I do intend to ground my Argument not on the secret but the presumed intention of these Ordeiners I am speaking of and shall accordingly shew that the Bishops who ordeined these revolting Presbyters ought to be presumed to have intended not to give them a Power of ordeining others § VII TO this purpose I suppose 3. That as indeed the Law is always charitable to presume that every man intends as it becomes him to intend so it is withal prudent to presume his actual intention not from what others do think will become him no nor from what will really become him in the judgment of God himself who is infallible but from what the Person may be presumed likely to judg to become him according to the general sense of men in his circumstances And therefore our Brethren must not judg of the intention of the Bishop by the real will of God much less by their own Notions concerning Gods will who cannot pretend to be more infallible than the Bishop himself but by the judgment of the Bishop himself that he must be presumed to intend what according to the Principles
which he is known to believe as a condition necessary in his circumstances to his being a Bishop he must think himself obliged to intend This observation will prevent all the Arguments by which themselves are perswaded that the Power of Ordination ought to be given to every Presbyter which they think the Bishop ought to will also and therefore that he ought to be presumed to will it if he be presumed to will as he ought It is his actual good intention that we are concerned for at present And that must not be presumed from Principles disputed but from Principles already and notoriously granted by him § VIII 4. THEREFORE in this way of judging of the actual intention of those Bishops who ordeined the first Separatists there can be no more prudent and secure measure than to consider the Notions then prevailing concerning the power of Presbyters especially those which were fundamental to all the Canons that were then in force as the Rules of Practice of this power These are most likely to have been taken by them for the measures of their Conscience And indeed the Canons were introduced into practice by a universal consent either when they were made or when they were received And they who received power yet were obliged to those Canons as to the exercise of it and therefore if they were either perswaded of the truth of the prevailing Opinion or were true to the obligations they had taken for the observance of the Canons these we have reason to presume to have been the measures of their consciences and therefore we have also reason further to suppose their practices such as might agree with these on supposition that they acted conscientiously And though possibly some particular persons might have entertained singular Opinions yet it is not so secure to presume his conveyance of Orders to have been fitted to his singular Opinions not only because it is not so easie to presume that any particular Person did follow a singular Opinion when the generality were so agreed in another nor only in regard of that resignation of Judgment which in those Ages was thought excellent in point of conscience on which account many thought themselves obliged to follow the sentiments of their Superiors in contradiction to their own but also because the validity of Succession depends on the practice and sense of the Generality of all places and Ages but especially of all Ages And though a particular person might intend differently from the rest of his Brethren yet he could give no more than himself had received and what that was depended on the intention of his Ordeiner which again will be best presumed from the sense of the Generality Only the supreme power is that which can never be presumed to have been confined At least this is a presumption that the Bishops then acted according to the Opinions and Canons then generally received unless they expresly declared themselves to the contrary Their silence is so far from being an Argument of their being of another mind as that it is indeed a very strong presumption in this case if in any of their consent If they continued silent when it so much concerned them to speak their minds that people might know the power they intended to give the Persons ordeined by them they must expect that people would understand them according to the received Opinions and therefore we have reason to presume that they themselves were desirous to be so understood § IX BUT whatever were the sentiments of the primitive Church concerning the Identity of Bishops and Presbyters originally whatever also they thought concerning the fitness that the power of Ordination should be given to bare Presbyters yet it is notorious that the contrary Opinion and Practice prevailed in the Church universally when the first dividing Presbyters whoever they were were ordeined and for many hundred years before even very near the times of the Apostles if we may believe the concurrent suffrages of the most learned Antiquaries of our Adversaries They do not deny and indeed the matter of Fact is too notorious to be denied by men of any ingenuity that whether they ought to be so or not yet actually Bishops were then distinguished from Presbyters and distinguished in this very particular that the power of Ordination was reserved as a Prerogative of the Bishop and never communicated to simple Presbyters Nor was it only their practice to do so but their Judgment that they ought to do so on account of Conscience It is very notorious that at least a little before the Reformation Aerius and the Waldenses Vid. Alphons à Castr. adv Haeres verb. Episcop and Marsilius of Padua and Wiclef were condemned for Hereticks for asserting the Parity of Bishops and Presbyters And it is withal as notorious that every Bishop was then obliged to condemn all Heresies that is all those Doctrines which were then censured as Heretical by that Church by which they were admitted to be Bishops and how odious also the name of Heresie was then even on account of Conscience I mention even these because whatever their Doctrines were in other things and how far soever they might go to justifie a separation from them who taught those Doctrines yet our Protestants themselves do not pretend to any Succession in these Western parts where themselves received their Orders but what was conveyed to them even by such Bishops as these were nor do I use their Authority for proving the Truth of their Doctrine in their censure of this particular Heresie but only to clear what their actual intention was in the Orders given by them for which it is sufficient that they themselves thought them true whether they were mistaken or not in thinking so However this is so acknowledged to have been believed and practised in the Ages we are speaking of as that the very Presbyterians themselves do charge them with differing herein from the sense of the first times because the Bishops had and exercised a Superiority over Presbyters which they conceive they had not in the Apostolical times They therefore call them Humane Bishops in opposition to the Scripture Bishops whom they conceive not to have been distinct from Presbyters And could the Bishops be no Scripture-Bishops because they were distinct from Presbyters And were not their Presbyters as much distinct for the same reason from Scripture-Presbyters because they were distinct from Bishops If this consequence hold why do they challenge the power and priviledges of those scripture-Scripture-Presbyters when they are so different from them If it do not why do they asperse the sacred Order of Episcopacy in modern Ages with such a deviation from the Primitive Rule § X HOWEVER this being notorious that the Bishops of the later Ages did actually think they ought to be distinct and distinct in this very particular of Ordination how is it probable that they would give all that power to Presbyters that should leave no distinction between them that
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
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
must be a right of the Presbytery in common according to our Adversaries Principles who conceive Government to be a right common to them I do not know whether our Adversaries themselves will think it necessary for me to prove If the supreme visible Government of the Church be the right of such Presbyteries in common not of particular Presbyters singly considered I cannot conceive how such a Government can be practicable unless the valid investiture of subordinate Governours be also appropriated to them § XVII I AM not concerned whether they will here allow the power given at the Ordination of a Presbyter to be a proper power of Government It suffices at present that the power given to particular Presbyters is as properly a power of Government as that is of the whole Presbyteries The power of the whole Presbyteries is only an Aggregate resulting from the valid Succession of the particular Presbyters whereof it consists And the power of Administring the Sacraments which is given to particular Presbyters at their Ordination is that on which their power of Government is grounded That is the reason which obliges all private Persons to submit to the Presbyteries and to all their lawful impositions because God has put it in their power to exclude refractory Persons from the ordinary means of Salvation And as far as this power of administring the Sacraments is granted to particular Presbyters when they are ordeined Presbyters so far also it is put in their power to exclude private Persons from the Sacraments by refusing to perform their Office to them Only because this exclusion by a particular Presbyter does not hinder other Presbyters who have as great a power as himself who should exclude one from performing their duty to a Person so excluded and the exclusion does oblige the Person excluded to submission no further than as he cannot hope for the benefit of the Sacraments without the consent of his excluder therefore it can only be to the whole Presbytery that every Member of a Church can be obliged to submit because it is the Presbytery alone that can oblige all to ratifie their censures so that the Sacraments cannot at all be gotten without their consent They can â—â—lige their own Members to ratifie them by vertue of the Subjection which each of them owes to the whole Community And they can oblige all other Churches and Presbyteries to ratifie their censures by vertue of that correspondence which all Churches and Presbyteries are obliged to maintein with each other on account of their common interest But still this does not hinder but that the power of particular Presbyters must be of the same kind with the power of the whole Presbyteries though it be not of the same extent which on the Principles now mentioned is sufficient to appropriate the disposal of it to the common right of Government § XVIII AND as by the former Argument it has appeared that de facto no such power was actually designed for them by their first Ordeiners as is at present exercised by our Brethren in their separation so by this later Topick it appears that it does not de jure belong to them by vertue of any thing given them by the Episcopal Presbyteries though we consider them as our Brethren are willing to consider them in this act of Ordination only as Presbyteries or at the utmost only as Presbyteries with a President which cannot make any substantial difference much less can the honour of presiding lose the President any of that honour which belongs to him as a single Presbyter Which I therefore observe that our Brethren may see how unjustifiable their Ordinations are upon any terms Though this power had been designed for them by their Ordeiners or though their being made Presbyters by their Ordeiners did as they think confer this power upon them really how little soever it was designed for them yet neither of these pretences can be available if their acts were not valid acts of the Presbyteries If they were not they could not give what they did intend to give them because they could not confer a valid legal title to that which was not their own to give So far must they be in such a case as this from giving really more than they intended to give If they think it usurpation for the Bishops and the Presbyters who adhere to them to act in the name of the whole Presbyteries how much greater Vsurpation must it be for a smaller over-voted number of Presbyters to attempt the same without the Bishop Certainly his presence though only as a first Presbyter must add great Authority to the legitimating their Assemblies as that must also do to the validity of their actings in them § XIX NAY on the contrary as they cannot either by any precedent or any reason defend the validity of such acts of a smaller part of the Presbyters without the Bishops so I do not understand how they can avoid the owning the validity even of the acts of a smaller number of Presbyters in conjunction with the Bishops if they will consider their own interest in them The Presbyters who assisted the Bishops in the solemnities of ordeining their first Predecessors were much the smaller part of the Presbyteries As for the rest their consent was not so much as required neither by any express act of their own nor by any delegation of their power to those who were present nor presumed from their absence after a Canonical summons And yet if these acts were not valid our Brethren cannot possibly defend the validity of their own Ordinations But if they be I might then shew how impossible it is that the validity of such acts can be derived from the power of the Presbytery and how necessary it is that they be resolved into an absolute power of the Bishop and therefore how much they will be obliged to own the power of the Bishops that they may defend the validity of their own Orders And considering that the Bishops and Presbyters make up one Government it is impossible if he be absolute that they can be so too And therefore if he can validly dispose of the common right without their consent they cannot possibly dispose of it without his which will again invalidate the acts of those Presbyteries for which our Brethren are concerned And if this power of ordeining others was never given to our Brethren de facto and if withal the validity of the conveyance fail by which they may pretend to it de jure beside the intention of their Ordeiners I do not understand what more can be requisite for overthrowing the validity of their Ordinations § XX THAT which they are apt to object after all is that they are made Presbyters and were designed to be made so and to be made so in the Scripture Notion of that word and that Ordination is a right belonging to a Scripture Presbyter But why should they presume that their design was to make Presbyters in
the Scripture sense any otherwise than as they thought the Presbyters in the modern sense justified by the Scripture If this was the reason as in all likelihood it must according to the sense of those times then certainly their prime design was only to give that power which was then granted to Presbyters which will not include the power of ordeining others as I have already shewn Besides it cannot be presumed that their design was to make Presbyters in the Scripture sense any farther than as they thought Scripture precedent obliging to their own times If they thought it lawful for them to alienate the right which originally belonged to them if at least they thought such an Alienation valid when done however unlawful to be done why should they rather think of retrieving the Scripture-practice in this particular than in those of the Deaconesses and the feasts of Love c. to which no parties think themselves obliged at present § XXI I CANNOT but think that this was really St. Hieromes sense of this matter Ad Euagr. who never thought himself obliged by his singular opinion concerning the Primitive form of Ecclesiastical Government to make any disturbance in the present settlement And the reason he gives for the change that it was for the avoiding Schism was a commendable reason and as much concerning his own and all future times as it did those wherein this change was first supposed to have been made Schism is still as dangerous to the Church and Episcopacy is still as prudent an expedient for preventing the occasion of Schism arising from parity now and for ever as it was then And the decree of the whole World which he mentions as the Authority by which this change was made if it do not include the Apostles or some such extraordinary Officers who in those times had alone the power of making such a Decree as he there speaks of which might oblige the whole World and in whose time the expressions he makes use of for expressing this Schism that one said he was of Paul another of Cephas another of Apollos were first and most literally fulfilled and it is unlikely that they would defer the remedy so long after the occasion as our Adversaries suppose besides that the mistake of mens thinking that the Disciples baptized by them were their own is not likely to have continued so long and to have prevailed so universally as to occasion a general Decree against it after the death of all the Apostles when St. Paul himself had so expresly condemned it so long before If I say the whole World concerned in this business did not include the Apostles and it is most certain that it cannot exclude them yet certainly it must have included all those extraordinary persons of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who besides their intimate acquaintance with the Apostles were themselves indued with great and Apostolical gifts and as they cannot be presumed ignorant of the Apostles mind in a matter of fact so notorious as this was of Government so they cannot be presumed unfaithful to their trust in a matter of this consequence as to make a Decree directly contrary to an establishment of the Apostles designed by them to be unalterable and this Decree an universal one without contradiction of any one of these Apostolical Persons § XXII WHATEVER our Brethren may think of these things now yet certainly St. Hierome could not on these terms think this change invalid Nor consequently could any of them think so who were in this matter guided by St. Hierome And if so we have no reason to presume that they must have intended to restore the antiquated Scripture-right of Presbyters which if it prove true must overthrow all our Adversaries Arguments for proving that Ordination was a right of Scripture-Presbyters in order to the proving the like right in Presbyters now Though it was their right then yet if it be alienable it may cease to be their right now If it were unalienable from those who once had it yet without defending the validity of any alienation they may want it now not because they alienated it but because they never had it However though it had been their design to give our present Presbyters all that right which belonged to Presbyters in the Apostles times yet certainly they who made these Presbyters are the most competent Judges of their own intentions if we will deal fairly not captiously And therefore even in this case our Adversaries should not immediately conclude that to be the right of modern Presbyters because themselves think that Presbyters in the Apostles time had it unless they could prove our modern Ordeiners to have been of their mind in this particular It suffices at present that I have shewn that it is not from the Scriptures as a Charter but from their Ordeiners as Persons Authorized by that Charter and as Authentick Expositors of it if not as to truth yet at least as to practice that they receive their Orders and therefore that the power actually received by them must not be measured by the true sence of the Scriptures but from that wherein their Ordeiners understood them But I have already proved that they who intended to make them Presbyters in the Scripture-sence did not could not suppose that the power of Ordination was the right of scripture-Scripture-Presbyters § XXIII BUT they may object further that the rights united by God are inseparable by any Humane Authority and that the power of Ordination is by God united to the other rights of Scripture Presbyters so that it was impossible to give them any one right without giving them all or to retein one without reteining all and therefore that if our present Presbyters have the power of administring the Sacraments they must not be denied the power of Ordination If our Adversaries mean that those Presbyters who had both those powers united in them by God could not be deprived of the one power without the other nor indeed of any by any Humane Authority this if it should prove true yet is a case wherein our present Ordinations are not concerned which were not received in those times wherein our Adversaries pretend to prove that these two powers were so inseparably united If further they say that de jure they ought not to be separated as they will find the bare Argument from Scripture-precedent very unconcluding to this purpose they neither can prove that ever scripture-Scripture-Presbyters did ordein in separation from a President much less that smaller over-voted parts of any particular Presbyteries or any Presbyteries made up of fugitives from many did so nor if they could can they prove the precedent obliging now without some more inforcing considerations from the nature of the thing so they will not find it easie to produce better And it is at present sufficient for my purpose that they may be separated de facto though they who separate them be to blame for doing so § XXIV NOR
is there any reason for them to oppose God and the Church as they usually do on this and other occasions If the Church's Authority be received from God then what is done by her is to be presumed to come from him the same way as what is done by any mans Proxy is presumed to be his own act and as what is done by an inferior Magistrate by virtue of his Office is presumed to come from the supreme Which will especially hold as a presumption that is where there are no clearer proofs of the supreme Magistrates mind being contrary to that of the inferior than our Adversaries can pretend to for proving the inseparable union of these powers by Divine institution If they were then united by God because they were united by the men who represented God why are they not disunited by God now when men alike empowered by him have disunited them Why should they not oblige God in one case as well as the other especially when there is nothing in the Commission it self that implies confinement in one case rather than the other and when the whole reason of judging is taken only from the actual practice how is it possible that any actual practice can prescribe against the power that introduced it that it may not introduce a different practice as arbitrarily as it introduced this If there had been a distinct Authority for making the union of these two powers inseparable distinct from that which united them only in practice or if the same Authority of men which united them in practice had declared Gods pleasure to be that they should for ever be so united though they might reverse the Authority of their own practice yet it might not be in their power to evacuate their own Declarations because those are supposed to belong to an Authority greater than their own and antecedent to it and therefore may rationally be supposed such as may null all future acts that are contrary to it But such distinct Authority or distinct Declaration our Adversaries cannot pretend in our present case § XXV AND if they could prove this inseparable Vnion of these two powers by the Divine appointment our Adversaries would do well to consider whether it would be more for their interest or their disadvantage that is whether it will not rather follow that they are no Presbyters at all who have received Episcopal Ordination that they have no power of administring the Sacraments because it is certain that they have not received the power of Ordination than that they must have received the power of ordeining other Presbyters because they have received the power of administring the Sacraments The Negative consequence is as unavoidable from the inseparableness of these two powers as the Affirmative that is it is as certain that where one of those powers is certainly not given there nothing is given because it cannot be supposed to be given alone as that if one be given the other must be given also As therefore it is certain that the Ordeiners intended to reserve the power of Ordination from the Persons ordeined Presbyters by them so it will follow by this principle that if the whole power was not intended none was so And if what was not intended was not given and what was not given was not received and the power of Ordination was not received then neither could the power of administring the Sacraments be received also And if so then let them be called by what name they please yet really they will be no Presbyters at least not in the Scripture-sence if either of these powers be essential to such a scripture-Scripture-Presbyter And then in vain do they challenge the power of such Presbyters when they are not those Presbyters to whom those powers belong And certainly it is much more certain and prudent to argue from the nature of the power given to them that they are Presbyters in the Scripture-sence who have the power given them which is supposed to belong to scripture-Scripture-Presbyters and on the contrary that they are not Presbyters in the Scripture-sence who have not that power given them than that they must have the power because they have the name and that intended in the Scripture signification Names are imposed arbitrarily to signifie what men please and if they please by the name Presbyter to signifie him whom the Scriptures call so yet still it is to be supposed to signifie that sense which they understand to be the sence of Scripture though they be mistaken in the sense of it And it is certain that the name cannot alter the nature of the power which is given to them though the nature of that power may alter the justice of their title to the name If they have less power given them than should belong to scripture-Scripture-Presbyters it must certainly follow that the name would be given them improperly and certainly our Adversaries themselves cannot think it just that they who are improperly called Scripture-Presbyters should claim the priviledges of them who are called so properly § XXVI INDEED if the nature of the powers were mutually inseparable it would be reasonable to argue that where one was given both must be so or if at least on one side this inseparableness held it were just to conclude that the other power must be given if this be that from which that other is inseparable but not on the contrary that the separable power must be given because that power is given from which it is supposed to be separable And on this account there is indeed some colour of reason to presume that where a higher power is given the inferior is given also because usually the Inferior is included in the Superior though it be not always so But it will by no means follow that a Superior power must follow that which is Inferior because here can be no pretence either of inseparable connexion or of inclusion Now this is plainly the case here All that our Adversaries can directly prove to have been given to their first Predecessors who received their Orders in the Communion of the Church is only a power of administring the Sacraments in their own Persons But the power of giving this power to others is certainly a power of a higher nature than the power of administring in their own Persons If therefore both these powers be essential to a scripture-Scripture-Presbyter and they cannot prove that any more than one of them was given to their Predecessors neither by any express donation nor by any inseparable connexion with that which was expresly given it will clearly follow that they were not made Presbyters in that sence which our Adversaries understand to be the sence of the Scriptures and therefore that they cannot claim the priviledges which they conceive due to Scripture-Presbyters And for my part I do not understand a more prudent Rule for distinguishing when the negative way of arguing is seasonable from this Topick that neither power is given because it is
God and the present sense of their Occidental Church the standard of Tradition without recourse to the monuments of the Primitive times and admitted withal so many incompetent ways of bringing in new opinions as new pretended revelations attested by justly-suspicious miracles not to mention the Authority of the Pope whereby it came to be in the power of a few to impose upon the whole it could not be admired that the further they pursued the consequences of these Principles the more they should prove mistaken and that meaner Persons who had the happiness to examine things by more certain Principles should discover many things which they had overseen And as to the means of information that those Ages of Popery wherein their errors were introduced wanted many such means with which God had blessed the World at the beginning of the Reformation Such were the edition of many of the unquestionable Records of the Primitive times the study of the tongues wherein the Scriptures and those Primitive Monuments were written the exacter skill in Ecclesiastical Antiquity by which they were better enabled to distinguish counterfeit from genuine Writers With these assistances it could not be admired if meaner Persons made greater discoveries than great multitudes of others who were otherwise more sagacious if they wanted them § XIV THE same plea I have to make against our present Adversaries both as to Principles and as to the means of information As to Principles that one great Principle by them opposed to the other extreme of the Romanists That the Scripture alone is the adaequate Digest of all Ecclesiastical Practices as well as of matters of belief was by rational consequence like to lead them into multitudes of errors into a contempt of Authority into a rejection of Ecclesiastical Constitutions prudently fitted to circumstances of present practice into an impossibility of Ecclesiastical Peace till all sorts of Persons Laicks as well as Clergymen may be agreed on which side the Scripture is clear in many things whereof if this Principle should prove false no account at all is to be expected in the Scripture Now the mistake of these men is not in any thing that concerns their abilities but meerly in their infelicity in lighting on such a very fallacious principle They judg of the consequences and judg rightly and I am so far of their mind that these and the like things are indeed just consequences from that Principle But the Principle it self they take up as a Principle that is precariously either without any reason at all or upon such reasons as could signifie nothing with any but such as are already possessed with a great favour to it They do not ordinarily dispute it without some indignation at the supposed impiety of him who questions it and by their whole behaviour clearly shew that it is rather their affection and the insensible prejudices of education that has engaged them in defence of it than any shew of reason either that it is true or that it is impious to question it And can we think it any reflection on the abilities of such to be insensibly carried away into a belief of such Principles when they make so little use of their abilities in judging concerning them § XV THE like may be also said concerning our means of information that our Adversaries generally use such means of understanding the Scripture as must necessarily leave them ignorant of many things which yet might certainly have been designed by the sacred Writers and by the Holy Ghost who inspired them Which is one general way of their making disputes endless by requiring a resolution in such cases wherein their own unwary stating of things have made them uncapable of a resolution They are for expounding the Scriptures only by themselves especially in matters doctrinal without allusion to the sense of those times in terms of Art which were plainly suited to the capacities of them who used those terms without allusion to the Notions and Doctrines of those times which were either confirmed or confuted by the sacred Writers without allusion to the whole Systemes of Principles then mainteined though they are very forward to expound difficult obscure passages by their modern Systemes without so much as offering to shew that any then mainteined them which yet they call expounding it by the Analogy of Faith without allusion to the Systemes of the immediately succeeding Ages of the Church who certainly took up their Systeme from what they understood of the Apostles minds from their Writings and Preachings and Conversations to whose capacities the Sacred Writings themselves were more immediately accommodated than they were to ours Upon these and the like Principles most of those things are grounded which may look like Paradoxes in my Expositions of the Scripture And I shall say no more at present in defence of them because something has been suggested to that purpose in several parts of this discourse but principally and professedly in my Prolegomena to my Tutors Book de Obstinatione whither I must again by all means refer my Reader who shall be curious to know what I have to say in favour of these seeming Novelties All that I shall at present remark to my present purpose is that by either not thinking on these things or by utterly neglecting them if they did think of them they must have deprived themselves of all possibility of understanding those Scriptures which were not intelligible without them And then what wonder is it that many things may be cleared by these assistances which they had never thought on nay that they should be cleared by one who had been incomparably less able to clear them if he as well as they had wanted these assistances § XVI BUT to give them all they can with any shew of reason desire Suppose I were as much mistaken as it the interest of their cause to wish I should be suppose their condition were not indeed so dangerous as I conceive it to be Yet why should they take it ill to be warned of a danger which I thought to be a danger though I were mistaken in thinking so Can I do otherwise if I would let them see my hearty well-wishes for their welfare Can I do it more fairly or with less suspicion of imposing on them than by tendring my reasons why I think their condition dangerous to their impartial consideration And what hurt is done them if my reasons should prove less convincing Must it not be a great satisfaction to themselves to be assured that those reasons are not convincing which make others think their condition dangerous Must it not be much more satisfactory even to themselves to know the uttermost of those reasons than only to be left to indefinite suspicions which usually in matters wherein mens fears are concerned make men apt to think they may be more solid than they appear to be upon enquiry No doubt they would think so who were as serious and sincere for their spiritual
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-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
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.
such a Separation as denies not only Actual Obedience but the Lawful Jurisdiction of Superiors and withdrawes Subjects from the proper Legal Coercions of such a Society especially if continued in the same Districts where Separation from Government is not intelligible without opposition to it must needs be Schismatical For where there are two Governments not Subordinate there must needs be two Bodies Politick and therefore that Separation which interrupts this Subordination and erects an Independent Government must consequently dissolve this Political Vnity and be Schismatical This therefore being the true ground of this Notion of Schism must be the principal thing requisite to be proved against our Adversaries And whether it be proved directly that the Church is such a Body Politick and it be thence inferred that such a Separation as that I have been speaking of is properly Schismatical or whether the Separation be first proved Schismatical and this Political Vnity of the Church be thence deduced both ways of proceeding will come to the same event § XLII ESPECIALLY considering 2. that though indeed we can by Reason prove it very convinient and avaylable for the Salvation of particular Persons that they be thus confederated into Political Societies yet we cannot prove it so necessary as that Antecedently to all Positive Revelation we might have been able to conclude that God must have thus confederated them For besides the great Presumption and Vncertainty of this way of Arguing what God must have done from what we esteem fit and convenient acknowledged by all Equal Persons in Instances whereof they may be presumed Equal Judges that is when this Argument is produced in favour of Adversaries the Argument is then more especially Weak and Imprudent when the conveniences are no greater than still to leave many things to the determination of Humane Prudence and such they are here and when we can have securer ways of Arguing as none will doubt but that it is much more secure to Enquire what God has actually done from actual Revelation than from our own fallible Conjectures what was fit to have been done by him especially in things so Indifferent and Arbitrary as these are concerning which I am at present discoursing If therefore it may appear that God has actually made the Church a Body Politick it will follow that resistance to Ecclesiastical Governors must be actually comdemned by God as Shismatical and on the contrary if it appear that God has actually condemned Resistance to Ecclesiastical Officers as Schismatical it will also follow that he has made the Church a Body Politick there being no other difference betwixt these two ways of Arguing but that one of them is a priori the other a posteriori but in both of them the Connexion is equally certain from its own rational Evidence § XLIII 3. THEREFORE As this actual Constitution of the Church is most proper to be proved from Scripture so the most satisfactory way of proving it thence will be not only to prove thence the Duty of Obedience to be required from Subjects to their Ecclesiastical Superiors but also to discover from thence the mischief likely to befall Subjects upon their Disobedience For 1. it is in vain to constitute a Government or a Body Politick properly so called without a Coercive Power over its particular refractory Members And therefore if in the Constitution of the Church as established in the Scriptures there appeared nothing Coercive over its particular Members to force them to the performance of their Duty under pain of a greater Prejudice to be incurred by them in case of refusal than that of barely acting irrationally and indecorously this very Omission would make it suspicious that the Duty exacted from them were no more than that Reverential respect which we commonly conceive due to Persons of excellent accomplishments or from whom we have received particular Obligations though they have no Right of Jurisdiction over us but not that Obedience which is properly due to Governours of Societies by virtue of their Offices without any regard to their Personal accomplishments and our Obligations to them So that this real Prejudice which is likely to be incurred by the Subject in Case of Disobedience is very necessary to be discovered from the nature of the Constitution of the Church as it is expressed in the Scripture even in order to the clearing the Nature of the Duty and the extent of the obligation of this Authority § XLIV AND 2. the Church being on this Supposal an External Body Politick its Coercive Power must also be External And therefore though the validity of her Censures be derived from Gods seconding them that is from his remitting or binding in Heaven what she remits or binds on Earth yet this power will indeed be very little Coercive if Gods confirmation be thought easily separable from the Churches Act. For seeing that a Society of this nature cannot imply any External Coercion of the External Act all the Coercion she can pretend to can be no other than a Deprivation of those Priviledges which are enjoyed and may be pretended to by virtue of her visible Membership and an exposing the Person so deprived to all the Calamities consequent to such a Deprivation But if the Confirmation of these censures by God be wholly resolved into the merit of the Cause for which they were inflicted they can never be feared nor consequently prove Coercive to their Subjects who are not convinced of the merit of the Cause it self Which in the event will make them never properly Coercive at all especially in regard of a Government which is acknowledged Fallible as the Church is generally by Protestants For it is to be presumed that all who stand out so obstinately against the Churches Authority as to provoke her Censures either are not or pretend not to be satisfied with the Justice of her Decrees and therefore if their own Judgments may be taken as all the Coerciveness of such Censures as these are which are not Externally Coercive must be derived from the Judgments of the Persons lying under them concerning their validity there can be no hopes of reclaiming them by Censures who are not already such as may be presumed satisfied concerning the Justice of the Cause for which they were inflicted and yet such alone are the proper Objects of Coercive Power § XLV BESIDES those Censures which are supposed only Declarative not Operative are not properly the Acts of Authorized but Skillful Persons for it is Skill not Authority that is a Prudent Presumption that any thing is such as it is Declared and therefore the Opinions of Learned Doctors though but private Persons would in this way of Proceeding be much more formidable than the Peremptory Sentences of Ecclesiastical Governours as they are considered only under that Relation I cannot see how this can be denied by those who conceive the Declaration to be purely-Speculative and to be of no further force for obliging particular Persons than as upon
Society can never be mainteined without a coercive power over such vested in its Governours nor without a power of deciding of such Laws Authentically in order to Practice For this power of Authentical Exposition is as necessary for preserving the Society in a Succession as the Legislative power it self was for its first establishment and therefore perfectly necessary for those Governours which are to keep up the Succession Especially considering that as I said no Authentick Interpretations are now to be expected from God himself And therefore it is as unreasonable to appeal from the Governours of the Church to the Scriptures in things concerning their Government as matters of Practice certainly must if any and to expect that either the Government or the Society could be preserved if such an Appeal were admitted as to expect that our Secular peace and Vnity could be preserved if we were allowed to appeal to the Letter of the Law against all the power of Magistrates either for their Execution or Interpretation § VII AND 4. That as it is thus inconsistent with Government or the Safety of any Society to admit of an Appeal from all its Magistracy to its Laws so it is also to admit the like Appeals from all the Visible Present Governours to one that is Invisible and from whom no present decision is to be expected For this is plainly to hinder all exercise of church-Church-Authority in this Life and consequently to frustrate its whole design seeing it is here only that it can be seasonable For if the Appeal be good the exercise of Government ought to be suspended till the Cause be decided by the Power to which the Appeal is made which if it cannot be expected in this Life will consequently hinder in this Life all exercise of Government by the Persons invested with it and so leave such a Society destitute of the means necessary for its own preservation in such Cases that is indeed in all which the frowardness and mistakes of the Appellants as well as the Justice of their Cause might make such Whence it plainly follows that the supreme Visible Governours of the Church must be absolute and unappealable even in regard of Appeals to be made to God himself Nor would our dissenting Brethren think this expression arrogant if they would be pleased to consider it in a parallel Case wherein themselves as many of them at least as are sensible of the moment of the things discoursed of and no others are competent Judges of them will I believe think it Just and Reasonable that is in Secular Government For will any of them think it fit that such Appeals should be admitted I do not say in the State but even in their own Families Could they ever expect to maintein their Authority or the Peace even of these little Societies upon these Terms if their Authority must be controlled and its execution suspended as often as their too partially-concerned Subjects should make such Appeals nay where themselves the Governours could not satisfy as much as their own Consciences as to the matter wherein the Appeal were made as our Church professes her self unable to satisfy hers in the matter of our Brethrens Appeal At least can any fallible Authority subject to humane mistakes and Prejudices of the Persons vested with it ever reach the end for which it is originally designed the decision of Controversies among their Subjects on these Terms § VIII AND yet the very same reasons which they urge for such an Appeal in Ecclesiasticals will proceed as strongly in Seculars For are the Governours of the Church tyrannical I believe themselves will not deny but that many of the Seculars are so too Are they fallible Certainly the Secular Governours must be much more so whose Errors are of less importance and consequently less obliging Providence to prevent them and who cannot pretend to such assistances of the Spirit as are given to the Ecclesiasticals at their Ordination for preventing mistakes and extravagances Are they subordinate to God and Jesus Christ And are not the Secular Governours so too Have we the Scriptures given us a Rule for us to discover their failings and as a Law by which themselves must be judged at least by their Supreme Master And cannot the same Scriptures besides the Laws of Nature and Nations and the Fundamental Constitutions of their respective Societies and the Rules of Prudence serve us for the same purpose to discover the lapses of Secular Princes And are not they as obnoxious to Gods Tribunal as the Ecclesiasticks for the violation of these Laws at the day of Judgment § IX WILL they therefore say that their nearer relation to God does make them more severely accountable to him I confess it does so But must it therefore withal make them more accountable to their own Subjects Must they therefore be more subject to curbs and interruptions in the present exercise of their Government I am sure this is contrary to the course of proceedings in humane affairs We do not find there that Appeals are more easily admitted but more difficultly by how much nearer the Persons from whom the Appeal is made are related to the Supreme Prince Nor are the miscarriages of that Government which is limitted or curbed either thought so aggreable or accountable as of that which has been absolute and arbitrary And I am sure this is contrary to the sense of all those wise and Politick Nations who have therefore either united their Sacred power with that of the Secular in one Person though their Offices and Exercises were clearly distinct or used ceremonies of Consecration in their admission to the Secular power or reputed them as mixt Persons and given them the stile of Sacrosancti not only to secure their Persons from violence but to conciliate a greater veneration for their Majesty not to add any restrictions to their Authority as to Men but rather to possess them with a greater reverence of their Prudence when by this Means they should see them intitled to such Extraordinary Divine assistances and a more profound submission to their Authority when resistance to them should look so like fighting against God himself and the very honour which God was pleased to confer on them in admitting them to so near a relation to himself might justly aw Men into an opinion that God would not admit of any resistance in any Case of Appeal it self but that where Active Obedience could not be paid them yet Passive should and that even Appeals themselves would not be admitted no not even in the Court of Conscience but in matters of great importance and very evident by the same proportion of Government as we see in all other Cases that Appeals are much more difficult by how much the Judicatory from whence the Appeal is made approaches nearer to the Supreme of all And if the Secular Prince have been always thought a gainer by this accession either of the like Power or the like Ceremonies of
Investiture into his own Power with those whereby the Ecclesiasticks are ordinarily settled in theirs then certainly the Original Ecclesiastical Power must be conceived more obligatory and less obnoxious to Appeal than the Secular which has been thus fortified by it § X AND 5. By the general Principles of Government it is not only true that Officers of higher Dignity are to be obeyed as Representatives of the Prince such as are Viceroys and Deputies but it is also true of the meanest Officers that are such as Constables c. That resistance of them in any Case is counted a resistance of the Prince and even where they transgress the Laws yet they are not to be opposed But according to the method of Regular Appeals not by an immediate recourse to the Prince himself but their more immediate Superiors And what is decreed in such Cases by those inferior Subordinate Officers to whom the Appeal is made is the same way to be obeyed as if it had been decreed by the Prince himself and under the same hazard of incurring the guilt of Rebellion against him especially where there can be no access to the Person of the Prince himself as there is none in our present Case So that by this method there can be no lawful remedy against the Exorbitances even of inferior Governours but by recourse to their Superiors and the Sentence given by Superiors upon such Appeal cannot be resisted without resisting Christ himself Thus Christ as a Governour is concerned to take care for the erection of a Body Politick consisting of Visible Governours as well as governed and Subordinate as well as Supreme Governours and to provide means of obliging all to obey them all respectively under pain of being accounted refractory against himself as a means of securing the performance of his own will by us which must be performed by us if we be real Subjects § XI BUT 2. He is also further concerned to see not only that his Will be performed by us but also that it be performed by us because it is his Will and not because it is our own humour and that it may appear to be so performed by us the erection of a Body Politick is also necessary He is concerned as a Governour to take care that it may appear even to Men that his Will is performed by us because it is his Will and not only because it is our humour to do the things willed by him For it is absolutely necessary for Government that it may attain the ends of Government to keep up its own reputation in the minds of Subjects For a despised Government can neither awe by its threats nor allure by its rewards nor consequently have any hold on the minds of Subjects to oblige them to perform their Duties or to preserve the publick Peace which are the most essential ends of Government Of this all wise Men have been so very sensible as that it has always been thought fit to punish the least affronts against Majesty how inconsiderable soever otherwise in themselves with the severest Penalties Though all civilized Nations and Places would afford innumerable instances hereof yet at present I name only one because I believe it will be of most Authority with our dissenting Brethren 2 Sam. x. 4.5 1 Chron. xix 4.5 and that is of David The affront of Hanun the Ammonite was not that of a Subject but of a neighbouring absolute Prince not against his Person but only his Ambassadors nor even against them was it such as might do them any permanent inconvenience It was only a matter of present shame the shaving of one half of their beards and cutting off their garments to the middle Yet we see this occasioned a very severely managed War wherein besides the mischief done in hot blood the whole People that were taken as Prisoners of War were treated with excessive rigour They were put under sawes and harrows of Iron 2 Sam. xii 31 1 Chron. xx 3 and axes of Iron and made to pass under the brick Kilne And to treat a Prince thus to whose Father David himself had confessed himself so much obliged I suppose in his exile under Saul for Nahash the Father of Hanun seems to have been the same who was vanquished by Saul 1 Sam. XI Ant. l. vi c. 5. Whereas yet Josephus without any ground from the Sacred Text will have him killed in the fight though afterwards in the Story it self he makes him newly deceased when this Embassy was sent Id. Ant. l. vii c. 5. unless possibly the distance between these two actions may incline us to suspect that there were two different Kings of the Ammonites of the same name To do thus with the Ammonites to whom the Nation of the Jews was so nearly related to the generality of those who had yielded to his mercy and in all their Cities may to Persons not considering how fatal in their consequences things may be which are inconsiderable in themselves and how necessary it is for Government that such consequences be in time prevented seem an excessively harsh expiation of so small a guilt Yet by David whom his History shews not to have been cruelly disposed nor revengeful this was thought necessary for preservation of his Government § XII NOW as Government can signify nothing without this reputation for the good of Subjects so neither can this reputation be preserved among them unless it may appear that they who obey the Authority do it not only to please themselves but him who has commanded the things to be performed by them and thereby signify their acknowledgment of his Authority and their own Subjection to him For what good can this reputation do unless it may appear to them who are to be edified by it And how can it appear to them that Subjects doing the commands of Authority have really that honour and respect for the Authority that commanded them unless this may also appear to them by their Practice conformable to such a respect which is indeed the only Prudent Argument for discovering what another does seriously believe And how can this appear by their Practice unless they see them do something at the command of the Authority which they may have reason to believe they would not have done if the Authority had not commanded it But in all things wherein themselves are gratified it may very justly be suspected whether they would not have done them though no Authority had required them and in all things wherein this gratification of themselves cannot be disproved it may be very probably be presumed § XIII NOR indeed is this appearance that Men do what is commanded by Authority only for the sake of the Authority only necessary as some may be inclinable to conceive for ostentation of the Power with which the Persons Authorized are invested nor only for edifying others with the goodness of the example but also for securing the performance of the Duties themselves Indeed if
Call And however express Promises might have been found to assure our expectation of the like influences in hearing the word Preached even in our present Age yet certainly their actual performance could not be expected in the hearing of any but Authorized Persons as no Supreme Prince can in reason be thought obliged to ratifie or second what any Rebel or Usurper should presume to proclaim or promise in his name The boldness of such an attempt is so far from a just title to a confirmation from the Lawful Prince as that it is always thought to deserve the most exemplary punishment And if this be the Case it will serve my end as well as if these influences of the Spirit were thought to be confined to the Sacraments themselves For this will oblige all to as strict a dependance on the Governours of the Church as the other For both the Episcopal Clergy will be found to have as just an Authority and the Non-Conformists as unjust a one to Preach the Word as to administer the Sacraments and it is as much in their power to whom they will Preach as to whom they will administer the Elements and consequently it will be also as much in their power to impose Conditions for the one as for the other And indeed my whole design in confining these expectations to the Sacraments is only by this means to confine them to the regularly-ordeined Clergy on account of that Right which they alone have to administer these Sacraments But though these Influences had been granted always to accompany the Word preached and by whomsoever preached yet it were fit to be considered farther § XX 5. WHETHER this Grace accompanying this Ordinance be so great as to be able to supply the want of the Sacraments at least so great as to secure the Salvation of those who enjoy this Ordinance whilest they want the Sacraments That this may appear it will be absolutely necessary that either no grace at all be conveyed by the Sacraments which may not also be expected in hearing the Word or that if any be conveyed at least it be not such as is necessary to Salvation For if any Grace necessary to Salvation be communicated by the Sacraments which is not communicated by Preaching then still the Sacraments may be also necessary for the Salvation of such a Person who still enjoys the Ordinance of Preaching and therefore he may still be obliged to submit to all unsinful Impositions in order to the obteining these Sacraments which on these accounts will appear so necessary for his Salvation But this cannot be much as plausibly pretended from any of the Texts produced for this purpose by our Brethren Where are there any Texts that mention the pardon of their Sins or the sanctification or acceptance of their Persons or their actual reconciliation barely on account of that Grace which they had received in their attendance on the Word preached Where are they said to be thereby united to Christ to be made members of his Body and to be thereby intitled to his constant vital influences These are the effects of the Sacraments and whatever Grace may be otherwise supposed communicated in hearing the Word preached yet if it fall short of these it must also consequently fall short of administring any solid security for the Salvation of the Persons so concerned But where is it indeed that they can find that either the Persons who had received this Grace or the Apostles who were sufficiently satisfied that they had received it ever thought them secure without that additional Grace which they were further to expect in the Sacraments Nay where is it that after the receiving of this Grace they do not immediately hasten to Baptism Nay they are urged and importuned by their Converters to do so Acts II. 37 Can they deny that the pricking of the heart in St. Peters Auditors was an effect of that Grace which accompanied the Word preached by him Yet after this we find the Persons themselves further solicitous what they should do v. 37 38. We find St. Peter further advising them to repent every one of them and to be Baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and that so they should receive the Holy Ghost Whence it appears that as yet they had not received pardon or the Holy Ghost Nay further he advises and exhorts them to save themselves from that untoward Generation v. 40 a plain sign that all that had been yet done was not sufficient for their Salvation What do they think of the Ethiopian converted by St. Philip He seems to have been a Proselyte of the Gates at least because he came up to Jerusalem to worship Acts VIII 27 And he had received all the Grace of the Word read as well as preached Nay he had professed to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God v. 30 37. Yet all this satisfied not him without Baptism v. 36 38. And certainly they cannot think the Grace received by St. Paul himself in his miraculous conversion inferior to any that had been received by them who had been converted by the Word preached And the effects were answerable upon him As soon as he had been struck down he immediately cryes out with trembling and astonishment Acts IX 6 Lord what wouldest thou have me to do v. 11 And he was praying when Ananias was sent to him And it should seem to be his excessive pensiveness upon that Providence that occasioned his fasting for three days together v. 9 What moral Dispositions could our Brethren themselves have required more from him for his Salvation Yet see how Ananias accosts him And now why tarriest thou Acts XXII 16 Arise and be baptized and wash away thy Sins calling upon the name of the Lord. It seems then as yet his Sins were not washed away and this was it that obliged him to make all possible hast to be baptized And yet the Case of Cornelius was more remarkable He was as to his Person a devout Man Acts X. 2 and one who feared God and did many almes Nay he had also this Testimony that his Prayers and almes had been accepted by God v. 4 31. And upon St. Peters preaching to him he received so plentiful a proportion of these gifts of the Spirit which accompany the Word preached as amazed his Spectators v. 45 Yet all this was not thought sufficient to supersede the necessity of Baptism or to delay it but was rather thought an Argument to intitle him to it Even Lydia whose heart God is said to have opened and whose example our Brethren do so much insist on for proving this efficacy of the Word preached v. 47 48. Acts XVI 14 15. did not think her self thereby the more excused either from receiving or hastening her Baptism v. 29 30. So in the Case of the Jaylor whose excellent demeanour to St. Paul and Silas even before his
the Supreme Deity and thence conclude that all other Images were to be rejected So against external Sacrifices they quote those passages of the same Philosophers that disparage the pompous Hecatombs of the wicked and make holy Souls acceptable with very mean Sacrifices or none at all nay indeed make the Soul it self the most acceptable Sacrifice The same thing might have been shewn in their Disputes against the magnificent Temples of the Jews and Heathens which the Christians then wanted and indeed in all their Disputes whatsoever against those external Solemnities which were not practised among the Christians though generally received among their Adversaries Our Saviour himself argues against the frequent Washings of the Jews from the greater care they ought to have of cleansing the inside St. Matt. xxiii 26 and against their superstitious observance of difference of meats from the greater pollution they were capable of receiving from what came out of their mouths St. Mark vii 18 as coming from their hearts than from any thing that only entred into it from without and against the confinement of the external solemn worship of God to Hierusalem St. Joh. iv 24 or mount Gerizim from the Spiritual nature of God to which such a confinement is not so agreeable and to whom holy Souls cultivated with Spiritual improvements are agreeable whereever they are § IV Many like instances of reasoning might have been also observed from the Apostles I only take notice of one which might give a very likely occasion for them then to take up such fancies as our modern Adversaries against whom I am at present discoursing have taken up now That is their being called a Royal Priesthood 1 Pet. ii 5.9 Rev. i. 6 and being chosen Kings and Priests unto God which might very probably make them believe that the Prayer of a good man though never so private might be as acceptable to God as the solemn Prayers of a Priest if he were not otherwise so good a man as he who prayed more privately and that indeed Personal Holiness gave a man a better Right to offer up these Spiritual Sacrifices than any Holiness of Office This very Title given to the Jews from whom the Christians took it as they did all their other Spiritual Priviledges which they challenged and appropriated to themselves as being the true Israelites for whom these Priviledges were originally intended had occasioned the like misunderstanding among them Corah's principal argument against the confinement of the Sacerdotal office to Aaron and his Sons was that all the congregation was holy as well as they Numb xvi 3 But how much a more likely occasion had they of falling into this mistake upon the first Conversions to the Christian Religion when they knew with what design they had been used by the Philosophers and especially the Stoicks from whom they were taken into the Elective Systeme purposely to deprive the Supreme Being of all publick solemnities of worship and to advance a wise man to that degree of Perfection as to be able to perform all offices by himself without any dependence on th◠publick administrers of the vulgar Religions especially considering that the Converts from Gentilism were more likely to take up these Notions from the Authorities and to understand them in the sense of the Philosophers than from the Old Testament with which we must presume them less acquainted Upon which supposition they must have been ignorant of this decision given by God himself against their sentiments even in that very Case of Corah § V Besides we have very many instances to let us see how very inclinable the vulgar was to mistake these Mystical Titles When they heard that every Christian immediately upon his becoming a Christian was made free we find how forward they were to understand that their freedom must exempt them from all Duties to their ordinary Superiors We see thereupon how necessary the Apostles found it upon all occasions to inculcate the Duties of a Eph. vi 1 Col. iii. 20 Children to their Parents b Eph. vi 5 Col. iii. 22 1 Tim. vi 1 2. Tit. ii 9 1 Pet. ii 18 of Servants to their Masters and of c Rom. xiii 1 2 3 c. 1 Tim. ii 1 2 1 Pet. ii 13 Subjects to their Sovereigns We see how necessary it was to perswade them to d 1 Pet. ii 13 to submit to every humane Ordinance for Gods sake not to e 1 Tim. vi 2 despise their Masters because they were Brethren and in general not to f 1 Pet. ii 16 use their Liberty for a cloak of maliciousness When Women were told that in Christ Jesus there was g Gal. 3.28 no difference between male and female we then see how necessary it was to restrain them from exercising their gifts in publick and h 1 Tim. ii 12· exercising Authority over the Man where they presumed their own gifts to be greater than those were of the Men over whom they exercised it and thereupon it seems to be that their Duty of Subjection to their i Eph. v. 22 24. Col. iii. 18 1 Pet. iii. 1 Husbands is so often urged on them And when they had heard that Christ was to k 1 Cor. xv 24 put down all Authority and power this also gave many of them occasion to be ill affected to all Authority and to l 2 St. Pet. ii 10 Jud. 8. speak evil of Dignities I do not speak of the Jews mistake of our Saviours Doctrine concerning m St. Joh. viii 32 33. Liberty as if he had therefore implied that they were all slaves in the ordinary notion of the word nor his words concerning n St. Joh. ii 19 20. St. Matt. xxvi 61 xxvii 40 St. Mark xiv 58 xv 29 raising up the Temple in three days as if he had meant it of their material Temple nor his words concerning the o St. Joh. vi 51 52. eating of his Body and drinking his Blood as if he had meant them in that barbarous sense wherein they understood them I say I mention not these because they were Adversaries and therefore willing to misunderstand him and withall willing to cavil even where they did not really misunderstand him But the instances I have given do shew how the Disciples themselves who were willing to understand him as well as they could or at least would never have professed themselves to have been otherwise were notwithstanding apt to misunderstand their Master in such instances as these were that none may wonder that this being the familiar way of teaching in those Oriental Countries they could have been so strangely misunderstood by their Auditors in a way of teaching which was so familiar to them And certainly it was as easie for them to collect from their being allowed the Title of Priests under the Gospel that they had a right to offer the Evangelical Sacrifices and therefore that the power of administring the Gospel-Ordinances
Being by this concatenation of Spiritual Beings in the several parts of the World so that the several influences are to be taken for God's because it is from him that they originally proceed by which means also the contempt of them will also reflect on God himself How they are thus contrived that this may follow may be seen in Apuleius and in Philo's Explication of Jacob's Ladder Apul. de Deo Socratis Philo. Hierocl de Provident Fragm apud Phot. Biblioth num 251. And indeed there are who make the very Notion of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be properly taken from the care of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 within us rather than from that whereby the World is governed in general But the passage of Seneca an Author of the Apostles Age is very considerable to our purpose where he tells us that a holy Spirit which he calls a God is in us and that he deals with us as we deal with him if we deal ill with exactly as the Psalmist with the perfect man thou shalt be perfect Psal. xviii 26 2 Sam. xxii 27 but with the froward thou shalt learn frowardness Besides this there is also another way according to the Platonical Hypothesis how this participation of the Spirit may intitle us to the special Providence of God And that is that as long as men were good God kept the Government of the World in his own hands but as they degenerated so he was thought to leave it to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if he then took no further notice of it I might have shewn how this Notion seems also to have been taken up by the Primitive Christians See Hackw Apol. for Provid Act. xvii 30 Act. xiv 16 Luk. i. 68 78. that this was the reason why they thought the World to have decayed that for the time past 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he took no notice of the mannes of men but suffered them to walk on in their own ways that he had now looked down from Heaven and visited his People And possibly this might have been the reason why they expected the end of the World that is of that Iron Age of it and waited for a new heaven 2 Pet. iii. 13 and a new Earth wherein righteousness was to dwell For the Golden Age was immediately to succeed the Iron And the reason that made the Golden Age so happy was that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epinomid apu Euseb. Pr. Eu. L.xi. c. 16 as Plato calls him was to take the Government into his own hand And therefore seeing Christ whom they took for this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had the Government of all things now committed to him by his Father it was very reasonable for them suddenly to expect those happy times which according to this Hypothesis were consequent to such a Government This seems to have bâ—â—n really the thoughts of the Author of the Sibylline Oracles and the Emperour Constantine in expounding the Eclogue of Virgil to this purpose And this must also make the sins committed under the Government of Christ to reflect upon him and would consequently concern him more particularly to take care to see them punished according to their desert § XVIII AND if the violation of particular Laws by this constitution of things be so great a sin and in which the Spirit is so concerned to see them punished who are guilty of that violation what shall we say of casting off the Legislative Power it self and disowning the Power which necessarily requires Subjection to Subordinate Governours as well as to the Supreme What of not only neglecting to perform the Conditions of it but casting off their Baptismal Covenant it self by which they were obliged to perform those Conditions What of dispossessing the Spirit of his interest in them not only by frequent grieving and provoking him in acting contrary to his Suggestions but also by a wilful neglect of those means which himself had appointed for continuing his possession of them These are certainly Crimes of the highest nature and most severely punishable by the Principles of Government And yet of these they were certainly guilty who in the Apostles times at least deserted the external Communion of the visible Church This will more particularly appear if we consider § XIX 4. That the whole Constitution even of the Government of the Church in that Age was Theocratical All the Officers of the Church were invested in their Office by the Holy Ghost himself He it was who qualified them for their Offices by his extraordinary supernatural gifts Eph. iv 11 He gave some Apostles some Prophets some Evangelists some Pastors and Teachers And he it was who empowered them to exercise those Gifts by noting the very particular Persons who were to be empowered to them who had the Authority of committing that Power to them either by giving their Ordainers the Gift of discerning Spirits or by signifying his pleasure to them either by appointments as when he was consulted by Lots or without appointment by some sensible appearance relating to them as he did also afterwards in the Cases of Alexander Bishop of Hierusalem and Fabian of Rome It was he therefore that made the Bishops of the Church And so for all the Ecclesiastical Offices they were then generally performed by peculiar Inspirations 1 Cor. 14. their Praying their Prophesying their celebrating the office of the Eucharist their Spiritual Songs and Hymns their very Interpretation of what had been by others delivered in strange tongues In the very Prudential management of their affairs they had also particular directions from the Spirit Act. xiii 2.4 viii 29 x. 19 xi 28 29. xvi 6 7 10. xviii 9 xix 21 xx 23 xxi 4 11. xxvii 22 24. He usually told them where they should Preach and where they should not who were particularly to be chosen out for the employment he had for them and what should be the success of their undertaking And if in this regard it had been a fighting * Act. v. 38 against God for even the Pharisies themselves to venture to oppose themselves to the Apostles how could it have been less than a rebelling against the same God the Spirit for their own followers to have deserted them This I take notice of that none may think that the Author to the Hebrews should speak so severely against the desertors of their publick Assemblies And though indeed the extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit be now ceased nay and several also of those extraordinary qualifications which were necessary for that Age peculiarly and could not then be gotten by the Persons who wanted them for the discharge of their Office in the use of ordinary means yet as long as the Holy Ghost is the Governour of the Church that is indeed as long as Christ himself is so who governs by the Holy Ghost as the Shechinah of his Throne
of Glory by which he is pleased to presentiate himself so long even the subordinate Governours must be presumed to be Authorized by him For it is an inseparable Royalty of the supreme Governour to have the nomination of subordinate Governours either by himself or by his Laws And where the nomination is made of the Persons by the Laws it is always to be presumed as much the Act of the supreme Governour as if it had been performed by him in his own Person and will as strictly oblige Subjects to Obedience to them and will make their resistance as properly a disowning of the supreme Authority The King does not concern himself in Person in the nomination of every inferior Officer nay many times knows not what is done by others in his name Yet the resisting of such Persons who are Legally invested in their Office the Law looks on as a resistance to the Royal Authority it self And though it may be lawful in some instances to deny them active Obedience when they require it in Cases wherein the Law who gave them their Power gave them no power to require it yet even in those Cases to gather Parties against them and to disown dependence on them and to separate from them would also be taken for a Rebellion against the supreme Authority where-ever it is Passive Obedience must be paid to them where Active cannot and upon no pretence of recourse to the supreme Prince can be denyed them without a violation of the Authority of that Prince to whom they pretend to have recourse Nor is this only necessary by the Principles of secular Government much less of that only which is proper to our Kingdom It is absolutely necessary by the Principles of Government as it relates to a visible Society without this no external Society can be maintained And even in the reason of the thing what a man does by his substitute is the same thing in Law as if it had been done by his own Person If therefore the supreme Authority delegate his Power by Legal Rules settled by him as such a Delegation is properly his Act and therefore properly obliges him so the Power so delegated is his also and the resistance made against it does properly affront him in his own Authority This I note to shew that our Adversaries present opposition to Persons Legally Authorized by the Holy Ghost according to the Rules settled by him for maintaining a Succession must be a Rebellion against the Holy Ghost himself though such subordinate Governours should prove mistaken and though they received no other gifts by their Ordination for the discharge of their Office but their bare Office alone And yet the Church has always thought that even such Gifts were given them at their Ordination But that not being necessary for my present design I shall not now enlarge on it § XX IN all these instances it appears that all sins against the Gospel-Dispensation are very properly sins against the Holy Ghost If were easie now to shew further that a separation from the Canonical Assemblies of the Church is a sin against the Gospel-Dispensation I say against the Dispensation it self and not only against particular Provisions of it It is an interpretative disowning Christ for our Master when we leave his School and his Chair It is a disowning his Royal Authority when we resist his subordinate Governours who have succeeded Canonically according to the Rules by him established for Succession It is a violation of that Peace which it was the great design of his Death to settle among us and of that Vnity of the Spirit which I have shewn to be necessary for deriving the influences of the Spirit to particular Members It is a violation of our Baptismal Promise and Covenant when we cut our selves off from being Members of that Society of which we professed our selves Members in our Baptism Most of these Arguments I have shewn to have been made use of by the Apostles themselves And undoubtedly the charges if true will strike at the Gospel-Dispensation § XXI AND for the Punishment assigned by the sacred Writers for this great sin And the way of reasoning used by them in applying the instances of the Old Testament to this purpose I consider that the Authors who were then for the Mystical Expositions of the Old Testament as we have seen that the Christians both by their Genius and their interest were for these Mystical Expositions those Authors I say supposed that even the Historical parts of it were not delivered by the sacred Writers purely for the sake of the Histories themselves but with relation to future Ages wherein they might be useful and yet more especially with relation to the times of the Messiah Now on this supposition it was not proper for them to mention any Histories but such as were designed for Precedents even to Posterity when Circumstances should prove exactly the same Nor was this only supposed to have been designed by the sacred Writers themselves but also by the Holy Ghost by whom they were inspired nay by him rather than by the Writers and these Mystical secondary applications were thought more principally disigned by him than the concernment of the Original History as to the Persons who were at first concerned in it So that on this supposition it was as rational even to ground Arguments for present Expectations on those past Histories how Personal soever they might otherwise seem in their Original design as no man doubts but it is rational to plead Precedents in our ordinary Courts because they were at first designed for that very purpose But more especially this was rational in the â—imes of the Messiah because the whole Old Testament was thought to have a pecular regard to those times Thus it was as rational for the Author to the Hebrews to apply the Promise made to Joshua Heb. xiii 5 I will never leave thee nor forsake thee to the Christian Hebrews to whom he wrote as it was for Jushua to whom it was made to apply if to himself because according to this supposition it was more principally designed by God himself for them than for him and indeed for him no otherwise than as his was to be a leading Case And this will give an account of the reasonableness and Prudence of many of the like reasonings from the Histories of the Old Testament thus applyed in the New And that they did really proceed on this supposition St. Paul himself assures us when after he had reckoned up several of the Judgments that befell Apostates in those times he tells us 1 Cor. x. 11 All these things happened to them as examples and were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the Worlds are come And though all the New Testament Writers use this way of reasoning yet none more frequently than St. Paul § XXII And as this Observation cleares the reason and the Prudence of such reasonings at least ad homines in regard of the
for it But he who receives from him what he had power to give him is not responsible for his Personal faults but has a just Title to the thing conferred by him and such as will be secured to him by the Law by which he is impowered to give it to him § III AND therefore by an invalid Administration I mean such a one only as is performed by him who has no Legal Power of administring the Sacraments From such a one the Communicant now described may indeed receive the external Symbols but God is not obliged by any act of his to confer the Spiritual benefits signified and intended to be Legally conveyed by those Symbols And it is from God that these Spiritual benefits are to be received if they be received at all § IV AND further yet by this validity I mean such a one as may be known and judged of by the Communicant That he who receives the Symbols from him whom he knows to have no Legal power of administring them or whom he might know not to have that power by such Rules as all Societies take care of for deriving Power to Succession and which withal they all take care that they should be notorious to all even the meanest capacities who use their diligence to know them as all are certainly obliged to do when their Practice is concerned in knowing them for the preventing Vsurpations of Power and all the consequent mischiefs which Societies must suffer from such Usurpations I mean that such a Communicant who by these means as they are contrived for the settlement of Christian Societies as Christians can know that he from whom he receives these Symbols was never Legally invested with a Power of administring them can never rationally expect that God should second such a Ministry by making good the Spiritual benefits which are Symbolically conveyed by this Ministry And that he who knows this or may know it by the means now mentioned cannot rationally look on it otherwise than as a perfect Nullity obliging God to nothing and therefore cannot enjoy any rational solid comfort from such Ordinances This I may therefore dispatch the more briefly now because several of the Principles requisite for proving it have been already discoursed on other occasions Such as those are I shall only lay together for clearing the present Consequence § V 1. THEREFORE the Spiritual advantages of the Sacraments are not immediately conveyed in the external participation of them And all Laws make a real difference between these two sorts of conveyances when the thing it self is immediately conveyed and when only a Right to it is conveyed by which the Receiver may recover it from him who has it in possession For example he who is actually put in possession of a piece of Land by him who has no Authority to give him possession does however continue in possession till he be again Legally dispossest And the Nullity of such a Givers act does not appear in the immediate effect but only in this that because he can confer no Legal Right therefore he cannot secure the Possession he has given whenever the Law shall take notice of what he has done But he who has the same Land conveyed to him only by promises before witnesses or by Instruments or even by earnest is not as yet put in Possession of the Land it self but is still left to the Law to recover the possession of the Land so conveyed from him who is as yet possessed of it And if the Promise or Instrument or Earnest be given by such a Person who has no Legal Power to give them the Nullity of such a grant is such as will never be likely so much as to gain him an actual Possession § VI THIS is exactly the Case of the Sacraments The Act of the Minister does not give possession of the Spiritual benefits of them but the giving of the Symbols by the Minister confers a Legal Right and obliges God to put well-disposed Communicants in actual possession of those Spiritual Graces where the Symbols themselves are validly administred that is where the Person who administers has received a Power from God of acting in his name in their administration But on the contrary where the Person who gives the Symbols is not empowered by God to act in his Name in giving them as they cannot convey the thing it self so neither can they any Right to it from God They cannot oblige God to perform what is further to be done by him but by Acting in his Name nor can any Acting in his Name oblige him but that which is by his own appointment So that such a Gift as this is can have no effect in Law seeing it confers neither the Right nor the Possâ—ssion of the thing designed by it Which is that I mean by a perfect Nullity § VII AND it is observable further 2. That the reason of this does hold not only in Acts of Authority that no Authority can be derived from God unless the Persons pretending in his name to give it be Authorized by him to give it 〈◊〉 but also in Deeds of Gifts None can oblige God in a Legal way to give that which it is only in his Power to give without Power received from him to Act in his Name in obliging him to such a Gift so that their Gift may in a Legal way of estimation be counted his and as his oblige him to performance This is no more in Gods Case than what is thought just and reasonable in the Gifts of the meanest private Persons Even such are not obliged by the Acts of others unless they have first Authorized them to Act in their name by express Procuration This I note that our Adversaries may see that our present reason will hold whether we do as yet suppose the Church to be a Body Politick or not and therefore though we should not suppose that God acted herein by way of Authority nor that the Persons empowered by him received any more Jurisdiction over the Church as a Society than those private Persons do receive when they are Authorized also by private Persons to make Legal conveyances and to undertake Legal obligations in their behalf and withal to let them see that though as yet they granted no more Authority in the Administrators of the Sacraments than what is necessary for a Legal conveyance of a Gift yet that will oblige others to depend on them in order to the obteining of that Gift which will easily infer an Authority of Jurisdiction § VIII AND 3. There is much less reason to expect that God should perform what is done in his Name by such unauthorized Persons than to expect it from ordinary Governours Ordinary Governours may be imposed on either to think they have made Promises where they have not or may be overswayed with kindness to the Usurpers Persons or to the Persons to whom the conveyance was made or by the exigency of their affairs or by some other
reason of the thing § IX This performed by two degrees 1. It is God alone that has the right of disposing the Spiritual benefits here conveyed § X XI XII The reason of the Adversaries mistakes § XIII 2. It is none but he that can give Possession of them § XIV 2. From the actual establishment of God No such Authority actually conferred upon the People § XV XVI XVI The weakness of the Argument from bare Primitive Precedent for proving a right conferred shewn from the many condescensions of those times and the Prudence of the Reasons that required them § XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV The unreasonableness of this way of Arguing § XXVI There were then circumstances proper to that Age which required particular condescension § XXVII Though the Negative Argument be not good yet the Positive is that the actual claim of Governours then is a good presumption that they had a right to the Power so claimed by them § XXVIII Persons extraordinarily-gifted at length made subject to the ordinary Governours of the Church § XXIX XXX XXXI This derivation of Power rather from Governours than from the People agreeable to those Precedents whom the Primitive Christians were most likely to imitate § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV A way proposed for accommodating the several Interests concerned in Ordination according to the Practice of those times § XXXVI XXXVII The Apostles unlikely to confer this right of Government on the People if left by God to their own Liberty according to the Notions which then prevailed among the Christians § XXXVIII Remarks tending to the satisfaction of the Lovers of Truth and Peace 1. This way of arguing from the actual establishments of God as it is much more modest so it is also more secure for finding out the right of Government than any conjectures we can make from the reason of the thing § XXXIX XL. 2. Though the People had this inherent right of Government originally yet it cannot exclude a right of God who may when he pleases resume this right into his own hands § XLI 3. If the People ever had such a right originally yet all that has been done since for alienating that right which could be done § XLII § I 3. THEREFORE no other Ministers have this Authority of Administring the Sacraments but only they who receive their Orders in the Episcopal Communion This I shall endeavour to prove by these Degrees 1. That the Authority of Administring the Sacraments must be derived from God 2. That though it be derived from him yet it is not so derived without the mediation of those men to whom it was at first committed 3. That it cannot be so derived from those men to whom it was at first committed without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them from those first times of the Apostles to ours at present 4. That this Authority is to be expected no where now but in the Episcopal Communion § II 1. THE Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God I do not only mean that it must be derived from God as all other things as well as Authorities are derived from him who is not only the Supreme Prince but the first Cause of all things Nor do I mean only that it must be from God the same way as all other even Secular Authority must be derived from him at least Providentially though the Power of Government were originally never so much at the disposal of the Persons to be governed For whatever the Creature has originally the disposal of it must be supposed at first derived from God But yet in a way of Providence God does also frequently dispose of Governments which had been otherwise in the Creatures liberty to dispose of as in those rights which are gotten by just Conquest and Prescription where the rights of Government are certainly disposed of by Providence without any possible pretence of consent in the Persons obliged to submit to it For the right of the Creature where-ever it has any is not to be understood so as to derogate from the right of God to dispose of them as he pleases whatever right they have as it must necessarily be derived from him if it be indeed any right at all so that derivation does not rob him of any of that which he had before It is to be understood not Privatively as they say but Accumulatively My meaning therefore is that this Power of administring the Sacraments must be so derived from God not as to exclude the mediation of such men who have received it in a Succession from him but so as to exclude all right originally derived from the Creature as far as the Creature is capable of such a right originally in contradistinction to God That is that no men have a right to Government in Ecclesiastical affairs but by a particular donation from God not by vertue of that general right which God has given every one by his general Providence to take care of himself and which therefore every individual Person may for himself and much more whole Multitudes may by common consent commit to others § III THE consequent whereof will be that all Ordinations and all Administrations of the Sacraments derived from any Multitudes or Persons on account of their general right of governing themselves without an express donation from God are not only irregular but invalid and such as can neither in Conscience oblige any Subjects to submit to them nor encourage any who are otherwise willing to submit to expect any benefit from them And my design in proving this Proposition is particularly to oppose not the Independents only but those others also who by the badness of their Cause have been forced upon their Principles and do assert a power in the mutinous Communalty to legitimate the Calling of those Pastors which they have been pleased to set up for themselves in opposition to their original Superiors on what account soever they assert it to them besides this of an express donation which I do not know that any yet have pretended to whether in regard of that intrinsick right every one is supposed to have for his own Government in Spirituals where he is not expresly imposed on by positive Provisions though withal he have not that intrinsick right either confirmed or enlarged by any such Provisions or in regard of their Election according to them who conceive the Elect only capable of constituting a Church and that according to the popular Notion of that word of Election § IV I AM sensible how needless my present undertaking is for proving the first Dividers of the several Parties to have been guilty of Schism For if any other form of Government be lawful in the Church besides Democracy that is indeed if it be in the Power of the Multitude to alienate their own Power by their own Act and if they cannot it is impossible
that the Supreme Government can be any other than Democratical certainly the first dividers could have no pretence for legitimating their proceedings by any consent of the Multitude For the Multitude themselves had then done all they could do to divest themselves of this right if originally they had any They lived in a Peaceable Subjection to their Governours they challenged no Authority over them they had reserved no Power to themselves to meet together in any Assemblies that might be capable of exercising an external Jurisdiction and without this it is impossible to understand any limitation in their granted Submission As therefore in civil Government where there is greater probability for ascribing much to the Multitude in regard of their original dominion over themselves at least as to the first constitution of it yet where the Multitude have given this power out of their own hands whether to a Person or a Body they may certainly as well as others be obliged to stand to their compacts when they have once made them though they were not at first obliged to make them And if so it will not only be a Vsurpation for themselves to resume those rights which they are thus supposed to have disposed of but will also cause a Nullity in what is done by them pursuant to that Vsurpation and much rather it must have the same effects in them who challenge these rights only in the name of the Multitude § V BUT then it is to be observed that in Seculars and where this original right of the People may be more plausibly pretended that which originally was no right nay is still confessed to have been none may yet in process of time become one on account of that Prescription which by the Law of Nations and their common interest not to mention the tacite consent of the Parties concerned which usually accompanies Prescription ought to be allowed a Power to determine differences and especially concerning the Supreme Power which must otherwise become undeterminable because they are uncapable of a competent Judg that may determine them On which Principles though the first Dividers had been guilty of Schism yet it might have been possible that their present Successors might have been innocent of it supposing that their Prescription had been such as had been requisite by that Law which gives a Legal force to Prescription that is that it had been long enough and peaceable that is particularly with regard to those who were concerned in the injury which was done at the first Division that is that the Bishops had given some Argument if not of their approbation yet at least of their consent Though I cannot but withal warn that I do not know how to clear our dissenting Brethrens practices from the charge of Schism even by this Topick of Prescription it self For among us they never yet had that peaceableness of possession which might amount to a Legal Prescription The Bishops whose Authority they at first invaded have ever since asserted their own Authority against them and have continued their claim to the same Jurisdiction of which they found them at first possessed The Independents in America can only excuse themselves from any injury done to Governours in regard of the Jurisdiction of the place they live in But they themselves though they were on these Principles allowed a right to erect themselves into a Body Politick could not yet be excused for breaking off their correspondence with Episcopal Jurisdictions But this will concern Schism in another Notion from that of which I am at present discoursing § VI BUT if it should prove true that the Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God this will exclude all pretence of Prescription in this Case By the Rules of all Politicks there lies no Prescription in favour of the Subject against the Supreme Government and though by the Law of Nations there may be Prescription for deciding the rights of several Independent Polities in regard of each other yet in reference to God they are all Subjects and so can never prescribe against his right by those Rules of equity which are the foundations of all Ecclesiastical Society These inferior rights are to be measured by the publick interest and it may be presumed to be the mind of God that lesser interests give way to greater whence it will follow that it is very fit and just that the interests of Subjects give way to the interest of Governours and that the interests of particular Governours give way to the common interests of mankind It is fit that particular Governours though absolute and independent should rather lose their real right than that mankind should perpetually be disturbed and the right of all Government exposed to perpetual uncertainties which must needs follow if Prescription may not be allowed a just right for determining differences of this nature Nay this is so very just and reasonable as that it is generally more for the interest than the prejudice even of those who suffer by it and therefore must in reason be acknowledged even by themselves for the most equal Rule of proceeding with Powers of an equal order Even they themselves would lose more by the weakening of their title to all the Authorities and Jurisdictions possessed by them if Prescription were not sufficient to legitimate a title otherwise not only bad but known to be so than they could reap advantage by their gains from others who can plead Prescription against them Without this very few if any titles could be thought secure And how great and perpetual a dissatisfaction must this be to the Possessors of any titles if they could never be secure of the right of their possessions § VII BUT none of all these reasons do hold in the deciding a divine title There can be no reason of publick interest so weighty as to make it fit that God should suffer the loss of any known right for it At least there can none appear so to us as that we can have reason to conclude that it is his will that his own interest should give way to it where he has not revealed it to be his pleasure to yield his interest to it And it cannot be right unless it be agreeable to the Divine will nor can we know it to be right unless we know it to be so agreeable Nor does he receive such advantages by this Rule of Prescription as might in any reason or equity oblige him to submit to the inconveniences of it Neither his title nor its evidence to us receives a right or confirmation from Prescription but as soon as we know any thing to be his right we cannot think it capable of being infringed by any whatsoever practices of his Creatures to the contrary Nor does he stand in any such need of any external assistance for the recovery of any of his rights as might oblige him to submit to any common Rules which might in any Case prove prejudicial to any of
his rights in order to the procuring that Assistance § VIII AND as on these accounts there can be no reason obliging him to wave any right on any pretence of Prescription whatsoever so in the reason of the thing we cannot conceive how any Creature can gain a right in process of time which was not good at first especially where there is no reason to ascribe any virtue to these implicite compacts for the security of the common interest which may convey a right Nor can we conceive in this case how that which was once the right of God can cease to be so without a deed of Gift So that if this be proved that this right of administring the Sacraments is originally Gods right and that they who first made the Separation invaded it without any Authority derived from God to administer them this will prove a Nullity not only in the Acts of the first Dividers but in all the Orders and Ordinances which have been since derived from them and on which all their pretensions to the name and priviledges of a Church must be founded if they have any solid foundation at all § IX AND that this is so that all Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God and from him alone in opposition to all origination from Men as I have now explained it I shall endeavour to prove both from the reason of the thing and from the actual institution of God 1. From the reason of the thing To this purpose it is to be remembred that the great end of instituting the Sacraments being the conveyance of the Spiritual benefits designed by the Sacraments this is the difference between Sacraments administred with Authority and those which are not so administred that by this administration of them with Authority these benefits are conveyed which cannot be expected where they are administred without Authority And therefore he only has the power of giving this Authority who has the power of ratifying what is done in his name by Persons so Authorized by him that is who has the original Right of disposing of the benefits so conveyed But it is God alone who has the right of disposing of these Spiritual benefits conveyed in the Sacrament and no Creature can pretend to it by any of those rights with which God has invested it by his general Rules of Providence antecedently to actual Revelation And this as to both regards both as to the right and as to the possession of the benefits here conveyed If the Multitude can neither dispose of the right of these benefits nor without the right put the Person to whom they would pretend to give right in possession of them then certainly they can have no pretence of a power of ratifying what should be done by Persons Authorized by them nor consequently can they have any power of giving them any lawful Authority which is perfectly unintelligible without a lawful power of ratification And that no creature has any right to dispose of either of these things and that God alone has the power to dispose of them will easily appear in discussing the particulars which because I have had occasion to touch formerly I hope I may be allowed to dispatch at present with the greater brevity and the rather because I conceive them so clear as that I do not foresee any thing considerable that our Adversaries themselves can object against them when they shall be pleased throughly to consider what may be said against them on this Argument § X 1. THEN it is God alone not any Creature that has the right of disposing of the Spiritual benefits here conveyed It is be alone that can forgive sins or regenerate or give the Holy Spirit or apply the Mystical benefits of Christs death and passion He alone can unite us to Christ and it is his judgment of us as one Body and Spirit with Christ which intitles us to all the consequential benefits of that Vnion These are the essential designs of the Sacraments without which they would be very little significant and to these the Multitude cannot lay any plausible claim And if our Brethren would but be as well pleased to consider the Ministers as conveyers of these benefits to men as they are pleased to consider them as they are representatives of men whose Petitions are by them offered to God certainly they could not think it in their power in regard of any natural inherent right to make promises of things which are not in their power or to empower representatives to act in their name in making such promises And if they would but consider the nature of a Covenant and the Ministers as common representatives of both parties of this Covenant of God in some things as well as of the people in others though they might think themselves at liberty to name their own representatives yet they could not but think it presumptuous to assume a right of imposing representatives on God beside the Rules of his own appointment They could not in reason think God obliged to ratify such presumptuous proceedings § XI AND it is very considerable to this purpose that according to those Notions which prevailed among the Jews who had always been brought up under a Theocracy the right of Government was thought grounded on the Spirit of Government Thus the seventy Elders derived Moses Authority by their partaking of his Spirit So Joshua Saul and David were the same way inaugurated by the Spirit of God which came upon them This was the thing intended to be signified by their material Vnction the conveyance of this Spirit of Government as the Mystical Vnction Psal. xlv 7 Luk. iv 18 Accordingly whereunto the Spirit alone without material Oyl is called Oyl And the very power of Christ is derived from his being Mystically annointed with the Holy Ghost Which is by so much the more to be expected under the state of the Gospel because the power it self is purely Spiritual and in relation to the other World And accordingly when our Saviour empowered his Apostles it was by breathing on them and giving them the Holy Ghost Joh. xx 22 Act. viii 18 And as the Apostles gave the Holy Ghost by the imposition of their hands so it was by that Ceremony that they conveyed the Ecclesiastical power 2 Tim. i. 6 And though the extraordinary manifestations that then accompanied this gift have long since ceased yet the reason of the gift it self does still continue Still the administration of the Government of Christ is performed by his Spirit Still our participation of Christ is by partaking of his Spirit and if his Authority was derived from his Vnction then they who would partake of his Authority must partake of his Unction too And still the presence of the Spirit is as necessary to support the burden of Government as ever And therefore the Multitude can have no inherent right to dispose of the Government because they have none to dispose
they are said neither to have been of men nor by men Gal. i. 1 Eph. iv 11 2 Cor. v. 20 They are reckoned among the gifts of Christ upon his ascending up on high They are called Embassadors for God and in Christs stead And it has always been reckoned among the Prerogatives of Majesty to have the sending of his own Embassadors Nay it was counted so peculiar a property of an Apostle to be sent by God himself as that St. Paul insists on it as an Argument to vindicate his own Apostleship against the false Apostles who quarelled at it Gal. i. 11 12. 1 Cor. ix 1 that he had received nothing from the other Apostles themselves and that himself had seen our Lord that he might receive his Authority from him Thus far therefore there appears no Precedent of any Authority either received from the Multitude or given to the Multitude by Christ himself who as yet alone had power to give it § XVI NOR do I think that our Adversaries themselves will pretend that the Apostles received their Authority from the People Yet so unwary they are in their arguing for the Authority of the People as that they produce such Proofs as must conclude this if any thing If the Peoples Expostulation with St. Peter concerning his baptizing of Cornelius had been an Act of proper Jurisdiction it must have been an exercise of Jurisdiction over St. Peter himself And if so they must in reason be supposed to have had some power of punishing him either by deposing him from his office or by suspending him from the exercise of it or at least by Authoritative withdrawing from him yet so as still to continue in the same good condition wherein they were before which can hardly be understood without a weakening of his Apostolical office For no proper Jurisdiction can be understood without a proportionably proper power of inflicting punishment in case of misdemeanour And if they will not own this that the People had a Power over the Apostles they must at least let go all their proofs which prove this if they prove any thing Which will extremely streighten them in their pretended Scripture Precedents For where-ever they find the People doing any thing without the Apostles which is the only Case wherein they could shew the proper extent of their own Authority they will find the Apostles themselves concerned which must therefore oblige them to understand such actings not to have been by way of Jurisdiction but of Expostulation § XVII WHEN was it therefore that this Authority was given to the Multitude By whom was it given to them who had a just Power of giving it them Was it afterwards given them by the Apostles who had hitherto held it independently of them If so it were well our Brethren would remember to insist only on such Proofs as are later than the date wherein they think it was given them and on such Proofs which speak more home to their design than those which are antienter than those times wherein themselves conceive this conveyance to have been made and which they must therefore acknowledg unconclusive But so far were the Apostles from giving away that Power to the Multitude which they had never received from them as that we find generally the Ordinations mentioned in the Scriptures performed either by themselves or by Persons Authorized as themselves were either by God himself or by them not by the People Tit. i. 5 Act. xiv 23 Act. vi They ordeined Elders in every City By them the order of Deacons was instituted and the Persons promoted to the Order They visited whole Countries and settled and confirmed the Churches they constituted what Officers and gave them what degrees and prescribed what Rules of Government they pleased according to their own Prudence and the suggestions of the Holy Ghost without consulting the Authority of any others which they could not have done if they had either acknowledged any self originated Power in the People or immediately given them that power which themselves had received immediately from God It cannot possibly be understood how the Rules of a Democratical Government could ever have permitted them to act so arbitrarily as it is plain they did in those first beginnings of Christianity § XVIII THERE were indeed many prudent reasons proper for those times which might prevail with the Apostles to desire the Peoples consent in the administration of their Government though the obliging validity of what was done had not depended on their Authority The Church was then a Body linked together only by an awe of Conscience not by any other external coercion And though now that the truth of Christianity and the Authority of the Apostles are sufficiently confirmed all are obliged to submit to the Rules prescribed by them as they would secure their happiness which will not leave them to that Liberty nor consequently intitle them to that right in the Government before they submit to it as our Brethren fancy yet before this conviction had prevailed on the minds of men it could not have been prudent for them to exercise the utmost extent of that Authority which did really belong to them Our Adversaries themselves will at least acknowledg the Apostles to have been infallible whence it will follow that their word alone ought to have been taken in Controversies then started at least where there appeared not evident reason to the contrary But we plainly find that even themselves durst not venture their Authority on so hard a tryal Even in probable things we do not find that they required their Auditors assent without such reasons as the matter would afford that is at least without probable ones And generally we find them so laying the stress of their persuasion on those reasons as if their Authority had been no reason at all Therefore in the Controversie concerning Circumcision Act. xv the Elders and the Multitude convened together with the Apostles to give their judgment concerning it and that in a Case which was to be decided by the Holy Ghost But what need had there been of all that trouble if the Apostles Authority alone had been sufficient for this decision The Holy Ghost spoke by the Apostles alone And could the whole Synod after all their diligence in enquiring and debating the Truth in that matter pretend to any greater Authority Was it likely that the ordinary Presbyters much more that the Laity themselves should have had any thing revealed to them which had been concealed from the very Apostles But we find the whole matter debated by reasons and rational applications of the Mystical sense of the Old Testament as if no new revelation had been pretended § XIX THE like might have been observed from the debates with St. Peter concerning his Preaching to Cornelius and with St. Paul concerning his Preaching against the obligation of the Ceremonial Law The lawfulness of Preaching to the Gentiles and of forbearing the externals of the Law were
Civil Governours both before and after the Captivity I think never by the People at least not near the Apostles times And the customs of the Literal Israelites then were they which the Mystical Israelites the Christians generally followed as far as they were suitable to the Mystical senses of the Old Testament and their present circumstances § XXXIV AND it was really the Ambition of most of the established Religious then received to have every particular Sacred performance done by a particular injunction of the God they worshipped Therefore their gods signified by lots or some such other way the particular Person by whom they would be served on particular occasions so far they were from leaving any thing to the disposal of the People And if this were in any thing observed punctually yet hardly in any thing more punctually than in Mysteries Metam xi Accordingly when Apuleius was desirous of being initiated in the Rites of Isis though he were already a consecrated Person and though the Hierophanta was his friend yet he durst do nothing in it till the Goddess had signified her pleasure concerning it whether she would be pleased to admit him at all and at what time and by what particular Hierophanta For though her choice was out of Persons already consecrated to her service yet no particular Person durst obtrude himself on the office without her particular appointment Nay they thought it as much as their Lives were worth to venture it and were under as much terror for the least transgressions of this kind as they were who officiated in the Jewish ministrations And can we think that a Power so sacred as this was could have been derived from the People But in this matter of Mysteries the Case is most undoubted that the giving of the Mysteries it self and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the communication of the ritual Books which none but those Sacred Persons had in their custody were parts of the Ceremonies of investing such Persons in their office And therefore as none but they had the Power of these things so none but they could have the Power of Authorizing their Successors § XXXV AND as in the now-mentioned Rites of Isis the Goddess alone had the nomination of the Person who was to perform her particular Solemnities so among the Jews themselves this was the way of determining the Person where it had not been determined by particular provisions In that Case the Priests cast lots for it which was a way used in that Nation for consulting God not the People Thus it was that Achan and Jonathan were discovered Luk. i. 9 And it was by lot that Zacharias was chosen out of the rest of the Priests of his Order of Abia to perform the Solemnities of his course Now this seems to have been the most antient way of empowering the Church Officers Thus St. Matthias was chosen into the Apostleship in the room of Judas And possibly this might be the meaning of that famous passage of Clemens Alexandrinus Ex lib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where giving an account of what St. John did for restoring the Churches of Asia after his return from his exile at Patmos he tells us that he did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Valesius reads it I suppose his meaning was that St. John consulted God in the case to know who should be intrusted with that that Sacred Office Which consultation might be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whether it were performed by lots or otherwise as it is usual to signifie a whole kind by an instance that is most eminent in it and it is known that the way of consulting their gods by lots was then generally practised by most Nations that mainteined any commerce with them The reason that makes me think that this was at first the ordinary way of empowering Church Officers is the very name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being confined to them and used ordinarily to signifie the Office it self Thus the Office of Judas is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Act. i. 17 25. not because it was given by the particular way of consulting God by lots as certainly it was not in Judas's Case but for this general reason now mentioned at least because he was chosen by Divine appointment And thus the Office seems to be called in Clement as most certainly it was afterwards And to this it very well agrees that St. Paul tells the ordinary Governours of the Asiatick Churches that the Holy Ghost had made them Bishops and the Prophesies concerning St. Timothy Act. xx 28 1 Tim. i. 18 and the tryal by the Spirit in the other St. Clement as well as the signification by they Sstirit in this § XXXVI AND possibly the several interests of the several sorts of Persons concerned in this business of Ordination might thus be accommodated according to the practice of those times 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Rom. Ep. ad Corinth It was requisite not for the Authority it self but for the success of the exercise of it that the Persons to be Authorized should have a good esteem among the Persons with whom they were to officiate Whether deserved or undeserved yet their actual having it is very considerable in order to their actual success And therefore they were always careful that Persons chosen should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as should have creditable Testimonies of their good behaviour Now of their publick repute who could in prudence be accepted for more competent witnesses than the Multitude They were therefore allowed either to chuse out the number of Persons to be Authorized as the Apostles prescribed them the number of seven to be ordeined Deacons or else a greater number out of which a new choice was to made as in the Case of St. Matthias Yet this good repute of the Persons was not the thing that could Authorize them alone This plainly appears in both instances In the institution of the Deacons the Apostles did not only prescribe the number to be chosen which was plainly an act of Authority over the Multitude but even after the choice had been made they still reserve the Power of placing the Persons in the office to themselves It was only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Act. vi 3 that they might give them not only the investiture but the Authority it self But when a further Election was to be made that was a plain Argument that the first Election was only to a Candidateship not to the Office it self And therefore if this Authority of the Multitude extended no further than to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it could not in reason be expounded to give the Authority it self For after this nomination of the Multitude followed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in those extraordinary times which continued beyond the Apostles times was a consulting God himself in the Case whether by the custom of lots a That of Matthias or by inspirations of the
any farther than our circumstances are the same as those were which were foreseen at their settlement If our circumstances be not the same they might have been very prudent in their provisions for settlement and yet we very imprudent in following their precedent in those provisions All that I infer from their settlement is only this that it is no way likely that they did believe that the People had any such inherent right in the Ecclesiastical Government as our Brethren conceive them to have and which the reasons and Authorities produced by them in this Argument prove if they prove any thing For it is not likely that they would have deprived them of any thing which was their right considering of how dangerous consequence it might have been to the progress of the Gospel it self for them to have done so and considering withal how much their Authority was questioned in those times But rather from the great silence with which these Rules were settled we have reason to conclude not only that the Apostles did not intend to deprive them of any right but also that the Multitude themselves who were concerned in them did not think themselves deprived of any And the very actual judgment of those times are much better assurances of the truth of this matter than our Adversaries present conjectures and much more than any of those reasons on which they are capable of grounding their conjectures They cannot think themselves at this distance better qualified for understanding the Scriptures than they were who wrote the Scriptures or than they for whose immediate use and in accommodation to whose language and circumstances they were written § XL AS for the reasons they made use of for informing themselves in this matter besides that the utmost they can make of them is only conjectural and the conjectures they make by them are not so probable as the motives of credibility of those Ages I say besides this there are other prudent inducements which might in reason make one more confident of the judgment of those Ages than of those Reasons We know no reasons which they could not know as well as we but they knew many of which we now are ignorant and besides were much better able to judg of the same reasons which we both know than we are We know none which they could not know For the reasons from the nature of Government in general and peculiarly of Government as Ecclesiastical are not proper to any one Age. But for bringing these reasonings down to determine the rights of any particular Government many particular matters of fact are requisite to be known of which they were undoubtedly better Judges than we are They better knew the actual design of the Sacraments what benefits were intended by them and how they would oblige men to a dependence on them who had the power of administring them They better knew the precedents from whence they were taken and the actual state how those precedents were observed by them from whom they were taken And they who knew these things could much better judg whether they were such as would allow the people any right in the Government They certainly knew the actual challenges of the people and the actual condescensions that were made to them they knew what was quietly received and what was either not received at all or received with contradiction And they who knew these things much better than we do must also have known much better what either was or was then thought to be the Peoples right in this matter of Government I only now mention those advantages they had above us in regard of the times they lived in not in regard of those many Prophets and other inspired Persons whom they could then consult and by whose assistance they might know many things certainly which without them we can only know conjecturally though we had the best information that reason is able to afford us § XLI A SECOND thing I could wish observed in relation to this Argument is this That though the People had this inherent right of Government originally as our Brethren pretend them to have had yet it cannot exclude a right of God who can when he pleases take the right into his own hands Which when he would be pleased to do Subjects were as much obliged to submit to his disposal of them as if they never had any right of disposing of themselves I have already given my reasons elsewhere and shall not now repeat them I only observe at present how much safer it is on this account also to acquiesce in Gods actual establishment than to trust to our reasonings from the nature of the thing which are much more uncertain and unsecure as to our Duty For supposing that by the reason of the thing we should find that the People might by their internal right pretend a title to dispose of the Government this might indeed take them off from making any further enquiry into Gods actual establishment but could not in the mean time secure their practice For if by his actual establishment he had reserved the right of Government wholly in his own hand and had actually subjected us to his own Rules he that should insist on that right of the People for defending himself against these actual impositions could not be excused by that pretence for his disobedience For though the People might have had a right if God had left them to themselves to prescribe or abrogate Rules for the Government of themselves yet in case God has made use of his own Prerogative they cannot then pretend to such a right because God has prevented it And he who in that Case should refuse obedience would be a rebel against God though he broke no compacts made by the People whether with or without his particular consent This will shew that how conclusive soever the reasons be yet for security of practice all must be obliged to depend on Gods actual establishment Which may let our Brethren see their obligation to enquire into this for the security of their Practice § XLII A THIRD Observation is this that if the People ever had any such original right yet all has been done for alienating it that could be done Whatever could be done by the Rule left by the Apostles for Succession by whatever Authority they are supposed to have acted whether as Apostles of Jesus Christ or as Apostles of the Churches whatever could be done by the act of the Multitudes themselves submitting to and owning the exercise of Authority in the Officers and never pretending any power afterwards to resume their own right if it had been so nor to practise any branch of it in calling Officers to an account for mal-administration how notoriously soever they were guilty of it whatever could be done by their own disowning any such right for many Ages and Successions and confirming the sentences of their Superiors against such Persons as challenged such rights in their
on the Persons who were to be tryed Though it is also very observable that even in that Age wherein these extraordinary means were used yet because they were not evident to any but them to whom they were made at least not certainly therefore even then they were not intended immediately for the Multitude but for the satisfaction of the Ordeiners who when they were themselves by these means informed of the qualifications of the Persons to be ordeined then invested them with the Powers So that as it is most probable even then that it was not their gifts of which these extraordinary discoveries were only testimonies but the Solemnities of this investiture that immediately gave them the Power it self so it is much more certain that in this way of proceeding the judgment of the ordeiners concerning the sufficiency of these evidences and the testimony given by them by the act of ordination it self were even then the only assurances by which the vulgar were enabled to judg concerning the Authority of any who were placed over them even by God himself And therefore in this way of tryal none could be presumed to have Authority from God but they whom the ordinary Governours judged to have received it Which will as to all intents of Practice oblige them to as near a dependence on the ordinary Governours of the Church as if they had received their Authority from those Governours themselves And certainly the reason will be much more cogent to oblige them to a dependence on Governours who can make out no better a title to the Call it self than what they can receive from the Governours than those who might pretend that their obligation to depend on them was only for their approbation in the exercise of the Authority committed to them not for deriving the Authority it self These if their pretence was true could only be punished for the disorderliness of their proceeding but they who derive their Power not from any supernatural gifts received by them antecedently to their ordination but from their ordination it self must expect that their proceedings be not only disorderly but invalid if they presume to exercise any Divine Authority not received by Ordination § VIII HENCE therefore I infer 4. That God did leave them to those ordinary means of judging concerning the right of their Governours which had been usual among them in judging concerning their secular Governours These were best suited to vulgar understanding that they might the same way judg of the title of their Spiritual Governours by which even they had been used and often been obliged to judg of the title of their secular Governours and the better such means are suited to popular understandings by so much they must prove more serviceable to the great end of Government They must have been more easily applicable to this particular design of Government than any new means that could have been introduced for this purpose and it is always to be presumed that all prudent Governours would rather make use of present means than any other if they may withal serve their ends as well In such a Case the very avoiding innovation is a very considerable advantage of such a means above any other Besides it was to be presumed that these were the means intended if no express provision was made for any other For we are to consider the present customs and Notions of that Age as the matter of their Revelations to be reformed where they were amiss and to be assured where they were uncertain especially where the Subject was of consequence And therefore where something was necessary to be practised and no new order was taken for the introduction of any thing new there it was most natural to presume that Christ did not think fit to make any alteration and therefore that he was pleased with what was already received § IX CERTAINLY we have reason to believe that this was most likely to be the reasoning of that Age and therefore if it had been a mistake he would in all likelihood have prevented it especially in the first beginnings of Christianity not only in regard of the moment of the thing so far as that Age it self was concerned in it but also in regard of the ill influence a mistake in that Age must have on all succeeding Ages and the great difficulty of ever reforming any such mistake afterwards when the mistake should have the advantage of a present possession and the averseness which is natural to men against changing any thing that had such possession when also such a possession received from such Persons who had best reason to know what was fit to be received would pass for a Presumption against the right of innovating any thing and when withal the credentials of Persons who would afterwards be desirous to reform them should decay as this Prescription and Presumption would grow stronger and prevail more on the minds of men This therefore being supposed that the Scriptures silence concerning any new provision is a strong presumption that the sacred Writers and the Apostles whose History they wrote never intended any this I say will let our Brethren see how insufficient their reasoning is from this silence of the Scripture concerning any certain Rule prescribed for Succession to conclude against any confinement of this Power to those certain Persons through whose hands this Succession is to be continued when by this means of management it is proved to be an Argument of the contrary And they must needs apprehend it as a great distress to their Cause to be obliged to produce any direct or positive Arguments either to disprove this confinement of the Power to Persons in Authority for the time being for maintaining Succession or to prove that they who pretend to an Authority which they have not received from their Superiors can justifie their claim by any other solid Principles Yet to this distress they must needs be reduced by this Observation § X 5. THEREFORE If this be the Case indeed that God intended that the Spiritual Power should be the same way derived to Posterity as the Temporal Power is then the matter will be plain that none may pretend to this Spiritual Power but they who have received it from those men to whom it was first committed For in deriving Temporal Power this method is still observed punctually not only that they who are Authorized by them who first received the Authority are validly Authorized but that none else are so And this Negative that none may pretend to Power but they who have received it from those men who had at first a Power to give it has by all wise Legislators been thought as necessary to oblige inferior Governours to a dependence on their Superiors as this dependence has been also thought necessary for the practicableness of all visible Government Besides where-ever Princes are obliged in extraordinary Cases to give extraordinary commands and Authority to some particular Persons without the formalities of
Law which is the only Precedent our Adversaries can make use of yet still they give them very sufficient Legal Credentials or where these are wanting they are not offended if their private commands be controlled by their publick notorious Rules and till these appear and appear to the satisfaction of those Governours who by those standing Rules are possessed of the Authority they are not obliged to yield to them § XI AND indeed the verification or Authentick publication even of these Credentials are they from whence they derive their obliging vertue and are properly the office of the subordinate Governours But this is more necessary to be observed in assuming of a constant Office than in executing a temporary command If a whole Office may be undertaken without the consent of visible Governours it is not possible to understand how that dependence can be maintained which is absolutely necessary for the peace of Societies For they who pretend to an Office independently on the ordinary Governours and who do also justifie an independent exercise of that Office must make as constant a practice of acting independently on their Superiors as they do of performing their Office and of approving themselves faithful to the trust committed to them And if single Acts relating to the Publick may prove of so dangerous consequence to the Publick when practised independently on the supreme visible Government of any Society how much more dangerous must it be to persist in a constant practice of such Acts What security can there be that they shall maintain a correspondence with their Superiors for driving on the same ends when they who are intent on those ends have no interest in the choice of them And in case of difference how can the publick peace be preserved whilst these pretenders to extraordinary Missions make a constant practice of resisting their ordinary Superiors especially if their power be thought greater because more immediately derived from God than that of their ordinary Governours and if withal as many be allowed to assume these Offices as shall have the confidence to do so where notorious Credentials are not insisted on for examining the Truth of their pretences At least this is extremely dissonant to the Politicks of all Governments and worldly Governours who never give Offices to be executed in the inferior Jurisdictions without notorious ways of approbation nor without the judgment of those Subordinate Officers within whose Jurisdiction they are to execute their Office Yet this is the claim of our Adversaries who challenge an Office of Preaching the word and administring the Sacraments never received from those Superiors whom they found possessed of the Supreme visible Government of the Church when they first began their separation § XII BUT 6. This course of approving the Authority of extraordinary Calls is then more rigorously and punctually insisted on according to the course of humane proceedings when the access to the Supreme Prince is more difficult Indeed where the Prince is near and may be easily consulted neither can the danger be so great which may be occasioned by false pretenders when they are so likely to be discovered before they can have time to compass any great design nor is there that fear that pretenders will venture where they are in so imminent danger of being discovered and of being suddenly and severely punished upon discovery And therefore it is reasonable to presume in such a case that he who pretends the Princes name for a design which cannot suddenly be dispatched does pretend truly when it is considered how present a danger it is to pretend falsly and that the danger is greater than can be countervailed by success in any design and more imminent than to allow time for a design which requires a considerable time before it can be compassed And as the Subjects in such a Case as this is need not fear any very considerable ill consequence that may ordinarily befall them at least not so ordinarily as they may receive advantage by sudden and sometimes secret prudential provisions of their Prince so neither can the Princes themselves apprehend the damage that may follow on such false pretences for so short a time as it is possible for them to continue undiscovered of that consequence as to countervail the benefit they may expect from the observance of their provisional commands though sometimes transacted with great suddenness and secrecy and therefore cannot think it reasonable altogether to forbear the advantages of these provisional commands for fear of the inconveniences of false Pretenders § XIII BUT where the distance is great or the access is very difficult or any other cause occurs that may delay the discovery or give opportunity for compleating ill designs before the discovery can be made there all wise Governours have thought it more prudent and safe to lose the advantage of having their secret commands without Credentials fulfilled than to hazard the mischiefs that may follow from the multitude of commands which may be pretended without control when bold men may be allowed the liberty of pretending to them without notorious Credentials or when any others are permitted to be Judges of the notoriety of those Credentials beside the ordinary Governours Accordingly in Provinces far distant from the Courts not only the disposal of Offices but even particular provisional commands at least such commands as are to be executed publickly must first pass the Offices of the Governours of those Provinces respectively before those Provinces can be obliged to believe and receive them for the true Acts of their Prince and they which are not thus verified are for that very reason presumed suspicious of being false and till they pass this course of tryal it is as unlawful to act upon them as if indeed they had been so and what is so done is counted as mere a Nullity in Law as if the Power had never been granted them But if Princes depart into Countries far distant from their own where they cannot be consulted they do not then think fit to lay restraints on their ordinary Governours by commissions unknown to them nor do the constitutions of any Politicks oblige such Governours to own any such § XIV AND this is exactly the Case here in Ecclesiastical Government God cannot be consulted in this Life and therefore if the Rules of humane Politicks be observed here nothing is to be taken for his pleasure but what is proposed for such by the ordinary Ecclesiastical Governours I mean nothing relating to prudential Practice or Authority At least no Officers can be presumed in this Age to have Authority who cannot prove their title either received from or verified by our present Ecclesiastical Governours And it is to the same purpose on whether of the two regards they depend We shall have as much reason to presume all their proceedings null for want of Power till that Power be verified as we shall have to believe them null when we think our selves assured that they
have received no Power at all Which in reference to Subjects already under Government will disoblige such Subjects from Submission to them and will consequently make their Authority as unpracticable antecedently to this approbation of the ordinary Governours as if they had none antecedently And because it is not probable by the Principles of Government that God would give an Authority that should be useless and unpracticable as to all the proper uses of Authority this will also make it suspicious that God does not indeed give this Authority it self antecedently to the approbation of ordinary Superiors Especially considering that though these ordinary fallible Superiors should be mistaken in thinking such Persons not Authorized when really they are so yet still their Authority must continue unpracticable by these Principles and that for ever if ordinary Superiors should for ever continue in their mistakes § XV THIS I note against the Opinion of a very ingenious and candid Person who conceives that the Authority is grounded on those gifts of the Spirit which he supposes to be in Persons antecedently to Ordination Mr. Humphreys and which he therefore conceives not given but approved by their Ordeiners so that according to this Hypothesis Ordination does not give this Power but only declares that they have it and gives them a liberty to exercise it within the Jurisdiction of the Ordeiners without which himself conceives it irreconcilable with any Order or Discipline that they should be permitted to exercise their gifts within those Jurisdictions and is sensible how impossible it is to secure the Church from the mischiefs which may be occasioned by the pretences of assuming Enthusiasts if Subjects may be allowed immediately to judg of their gifts and to receive them as the measures of their Practice antecedently to the declaration of their ordinary Superiors If this were true it would indeed follow that Acts of this Authority would indeed be valid before God antecedently to the Declarations of ordinary Superiors and even after them contrary to the Declarations of fallible Superiors in case they should prove actually mistaken which is no hard supposition concerning Superiors who are acknowledged fallible especially in their Declarations concerning things which are true or false antecedently to their Declarations though they might be obnoxious to Canonical Penalties for exercising their gifts antecedently to this Canonical approbation § XVI BUT in reference to Practice the Question will not be what is really valid before God but what may be known to be valid by men And if men presume that to be invalid which is really valid they cannot look on any thing done by them as valid whilest they are supposed to doubt of the validity of the Authority by which it is done And if Subjects be obliged to stand to the judgment of ordinary Superiors concerning the validity of the Authority to which men pretend it plainly follows that even where their Superiors are actually mistaken in judging Persons to have no Authority who really have it yet Subjects must in that Case presume they have none at least presume so in reference to Practice Which will as much discourage them from joining in Communion with such Persons disapproved by Superiors and will consequently oblige them to as near a dependence on Superiors for the practicableness of their Authority as if they had really received it from them which presumed invalidity is sufficient for all that I am concerned for in this Question Besides the unpracticableness of such an Authority independently on Superiors I have shewn to be a great and prudent Presumption from the Principles of Government that no such Authority is given independently on Superiors § XVII BUT 2. Our Brethren must be obliged in equity to grant this Negative way of arguing that men cannot be supposed to have an Authority from God which they cannot shew their title to by the mediation of ordinary Superiors because they cannot pitch on a more certain way of proving that such Persons have received Authority from God than that they have received it from them who were at first Authorized by God and Authorized to give their Authority I cannot conceive how such Persons can pretend to come by their Authority from God otherwise than either that they must have received it from him immediately or that they must have received it from him mediately with dependence on the Scriptures But neither of these Pretences can satisfie others or prevent the mischiefs which may follow from false pretences which I have shewn how much it is the common interest of all Governments of what nature soever to have prevented § XVIII 1. THEN They cannot pretend to receive their Authority from God immediately For they neither can give any solid reason for satisfying themselves that God will call any immediately in these modern Ages much less that they in particular are so called by him nor much less can they satisfie others that they are called God has never promised that he will call any in such an extraordinary way in these modern Ages nor have we any reason to believe that he ever intended it All the extraordinary manifestations which alone made these extraordinary Calls seasonable and useful all confess to have been long since discontinued And it is no way likely that he would continue his extraordinary Calls without his extraordinary manifestations without which they must be so useless And if it neither appear in general that God has actually promised it nor that it is probable that he would ever have intended it how can they satisfie themselves that they in particular are however actually called by him Will they or can they say that God has spoken to them immediately No doubt some Enthusiasts will say so But it is sufficient for my purpose if this cannot be said without Enthusiasm § XIX AND if they will avoid this charge let them consider the differences made between true Prophets and Enthusiasts the secret evidences not only of the Revelations themselves but also of their proceeding from God which appeared to the Prophets themselves either those that are mentioned by the Jews or any others that may be rational Let them consider how dangerous it must prove to themselves as well as others seduced by them if they should prove mistaken how highly responsible they must be to God if they run in his name when they are not sent by him and whether the evidence of their Mission be great enough either to prevent or countervail that danger Let them judg themselves in this particular with the same severity wherewith they would judg others who would pretend Authority for messages contrary to their own and with the same wherewith they must expect to be judged by God if they should prove mistaken and I am confident they will find the evidence necessary for satisfying them in this particular not only much greater than they have but also than they can rationally expect in this present Age. Nay if they would consider how
impossible it is to justifie their Mission in this way without such a particular Revelation as must make them properly Prophets and how themselves grant the discontinuance of that gift I cannot but think if these things were throughly considered that there would be very few if any who would notwithstanding all this pretend to this Authority or think they had that evidence for it as might really satisfie themselves for pretending to it § XX BUT when it is considered further how much others would be concerned in this gift indeed more so than the Person himself who had it and therefore how insufficient it is that they satisfie themselves concerning it unless they be able to satisfie others also how impossible it is to expect that others should believe them extraordinarily called whilest they do not so much as pretend to extraordinary Credentials how little God himself ever expected this who when this sending of Prophets was more ordinary than it can be now pretended yet never sent a Prophet without signs or Miracles to confirm his Mission and appointed Rules for judging between true and false Prophets allowed the judgment of them according to those Rules to their fallible Superiors Considering also that the same reasons hold still for making the same things prudent now and fit to be expected as well as formerly This would not only prove a very just presumption against such a pretence with all others besides the pretender himself but might also shame the pretender himself from pretending it without better evidences than are pretended for the satisfaction of others of the truth of such pretences § XXI NOR 2. Can they pretend to receive this Authority from God from the Scriptures but so as to receive it independently on the act of any of their ordinary Superiors Charters indeed do impower and direct ordinary Governours to continue a Succession of their Power but never empower any particular Person without the concurrence of Governours never without dependependence on them much less ever in opposition to them If they did the Persons so Authorized could not be thought extraordinary Authorized if they received their Authority from the same perpetual standing Rule by which ordinary Governours may be thought capable of receiving it Either therefore they must not pretend to receive their Authority immediately from the Scriptures or if they do they must allow that way of receiving it as an ordinary way And then it will concern them to explain how it is possible to maintain a dependence of the inferior Governours on the supreme visible ones if they receive their Authority thus independently on them or how it is possible to maintain Government in any visible Society without this visible dependence I am sure this supposition is extremely different from all Precedents of humane Politicks which is no great recommendation of its likelihood But how is it possible for them to explain how particular Persons can be Authorized by a Writing immediately where their particular names are not so much as mentioned when they were not in being when the Writings were made and so could not have been known by any humane ways of knowledge by the Writers themselves Can any Precedent be given for this that ever any prudent humane Legislators have thought so small an evidence as this sufficient for the proof of a thing which it is the publick interest that it should be so very notorious Nay in a way of humane proof would it not be presumed on the contrary that such Persons could never have been particularly designed by the Writers whom it was so impossible for them in a humane way to know But they may say that God who inspired the sacred Writers knew all particular Persons to be Authorized by them through all succeeding generations No doubt he did so But it is not his secret but his revealed knowledg that is to be the measure of our Practices And how can it appear to us that he was pleased to reveal to the sacred Writers the Persons who should succeed in the Ecclesiastical Authority in latter generations when he has not been pleased to reveal their names nor indeed to describe any particular Persons by any such peculiar Characters as might in prudence be sufficient to distinguish them from false pretenders If they had been so described as that we might have known them certainly by humane means why might not the Writers have known them who were as able to know what might by humane means be collected from their own words as we are If they be so described as that yet they cannot be known by any humane means short of Revelation how can they be said to have been revealed at all how can they be said to be revealed to us who are to expect no new Revelation from that by which it is so impossible to know them certainly § XXII THE uttermost that I can foresee as possible to be pretended in this Case without gross Enthusiasm is that the Scripture may describe the qualifications of Persons to be Authorized and that we may know who have those qualifications in the several succeeding Ages independently on the judgment of the present respective Governours But where there is any difference in mens judgments concerning these qualifications of Persons that some Persons judg those men qualified whom others judg not to be so this is a Controversie which as it cannot be pretended to be decided by the Scriptures which if they indeed tell us what qualifications are requisite for the Ministry yet they cannot be thought withal to tell us what particular Persons are indued with those qualifications So neither is the thing it self always so notorious as to assure that unanimity of Judgment even between candid and judicious Persons that is altogether necessary for the preservation of the publick Peace Much less when many are likely to be concerned in it who are neither judicious nor candid such as the Persons who set up themselves as Candidates for this Election and the interests and Parties they may make So that still there will be need of an Authoritative decision in this matter and this in a thing which the Scripture cannot be pretended to have decided But neither is it agreeable with the Principles of any policy that all Persons who are qualified themselves should for that reason be supposed to have Authority nor that none should have Authority who cannot appear certainly to be so qualified The publick service requires a certain number which if it be considerably exceeded or failed of the excess or defect will be so far from being serviceable as that it will prove prejudicial to the publick And what security have we that the number of Persons qualified shall be always such as may answer that due proportion which may be useful And yet if qualifications give the Authority and all that Church Governours can do be not to give the Authority to Persons qualified but to judg who have the Authority already by their having the
qualifications whatever proportion be requisite for publick service they must admit all those whom they judg qualified and admit none but such if the qualifications alone be supposed to intitle to the Authority But if any may be rejected whom they think qualified or any admitted whom they do not judg qualified either of these are sufficient to shew that qualifications alone cannot be conceived sufficient to intitle to Authority And yet this is all that can be thought of how the Scriptures can be thought to design particular Persons for Authority that they may indeed describe and particularize those qualifications which may fit a Person when he is known to have them for Authority CHAP. XXI Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived to this Age without a continued Succession THE CONTENTS 3. This Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived from those men to whom it was at first committed to the age we live in without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them § I. 1. This Authority could not be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own time Neither by them in their own Persons nor by their Deed of Gift nor by their Writings § II. 2. It hence follows that the only way they could use for conveying this Authority to others after their decease must be by appointing sufficient substitutes who might act for them after their departure § III. 3. The same reasons which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey this Power to any who did not live in their own Age do also prove it impossible for any of their Successors to do so § IV V. 4. This Negative Argument will only hold concerning the only substitutes of the Apostles and concerning them it will hold That they who have not received Power from them who are alone substituted by the Apostles to convey their Power to others cannot at all receive any Power from the Apostles § VI VII VIII IX 5. That this Negative Argument applied to any particular Age will hold concerning the only substitutes remaining in that particular Age. Bishops were the only substitutes of the Apostles then remaining when our Brethren began their innovations § X. § I 3. THIS Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived in this Age we live in from those men to whom it was at first committed that is from the Apostles without a continued succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them from those first times of the Apostles to ours at present § II FOR it is plain 1. That this Authority cannot be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own time There are but three ways conceivable how this might be possible that they themselves might convey Authority to others either by their Persons or by their Deed of Gift or by their Writings But by none of these means are they capable of receiving Authority from them who did not live in their time Not from them in their own Persons because they were dead before the Persons of whom we speak were born or were capable of receiving Authority from them For it is impossible to understand by the nature of any Humane contracts how a personal right can be devolved to another without a personal act or how any personal act can be between Persons who are not supposed coexistent at the same time Not by their Deed of Gift because this also could only convey their Power to Persons of their own Age. Especially considering that Power is that which is the original security of all other Gifts Indeed where a standing Power is supposed and a constant orderly Succession into that Power there a Gift may be made to future Persons which may both be determined by Persons so empowered and the Gift secured to Persons so determined by them But all are so sensible of the unpracticableness of a Gift to future Persons without a Power both to determine the Persons and secure the Gift to them as that it is ordinary in Wills to appoint Executors who may secure the performance where the standing Power cannot descend minutely to take care of the performance in particular cases And it were certainly in vain to make Testaments if none were empowered to determine the Controversies which rise in execution of them and if the publick Authority did not confirm the Act of the Testator in nominating an Executor and the Power of the Executor for performing the trust committed to him It is therefore absolutely necessary that a Power be first established by which the Will may be performed and a Succession in that Power ascertained for so long at least as any particular of the will remains unperformed before any one can in prudence think such a will performable And therefore the Power of the Apostles being the Supreme and only Power by which the Church as a Body Politick does subsist must be first secured and secured in a regular constant Succession so that none ought to be supposed in future Ages to receive any Power from them but they who receive it in that Succession by the hands of Persons empowered to give it them And because their Legacies are not confined to any certain Age therefore the Power of their Executors must not expire for ever and so much the rather because there is no superior Power to take care of the execution in case the Persons should fail who are immediately intrusted with the Execution Not by their Writings though they indeed continued extant after the decease of the Writers for what has been said in the future Chapter § III HENCE it follows 2. That if they would convey any Power to Persons not living in their own Age seeing they could not do it by themselves they must do it by appointing sufficient substitutes to act in their name after their decease that is they must give such Persons whom they would substitute the same Power themselves had received from Christ I mean as to these ordinary exercises of Power for which I am at present concerned and not only so but the same Power also which themselves had received of communicating this Power to others Where both of these were present the act of such substitutes was to be taken for the Act of the Apostles themselves and as validly obliging them as if it had been performed by themselves in their own Persons by all the Laws then received concerning Delegation and substitution And the want of either of them was sufficient by the same Laws to invalidate a conveyance from the Apostles by so imperfectly-Authorized substitutes And I have already shewn that the Laws then received were punctually observed by the Apostles in these their Legal conveyances I cannot foresee what other means our Adversaries can think of to avoid this consequence Chap. iii. §. 5 6 7 8. When they shall think of any it will then be time enough to consider it § IV AND 3. The very same reasons
which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey their Power to any who did not live in their own Age does also prove it impossible for any of their successors to do so They also cannot be supposed capable of acting in their own Persons when they cease to be in their own Persons and therefore can only be capable of acting by their substitutes whom they have intrusted with their Power and none can be taken for their substitutes but they who have been made so by their personal act when they were alive Which will perfectly reach the Negative for which I am concerned at present that they cannot be taken for the Apostles substitutes nor for the substitutes of any of their successors in later Ages who have not been substituted by them by a personal act and that what has not been done since by any substitute either of the Apostles or of any of their successors cannot be taken for the act of any of them and therefore cannot derive any Authority from them § V THESE things are as applicable to the Successors of the Apostles in every Age respectively as they are to the Apostles themselves As therefore in the Age succeeding the Apostles nothing could be done by the Apostles but what was done by some of them to whom the Apostles had committed their Power by a personal act in the Apostolical Age it self So neither in the third Age could any thing be taken for the Act of the Successors of the Apostles but what was done by Persons Authorized by their personal act in the preceding Age whilest those Successors were yet living And the same reasoning may be brought down through all the intermediate Ages to that wherein we live at present so that nothing ought to be taken for the Act of the Apostles in our present Age but what is done by them who have been lawfully substituted by them who have received their Power from their other lawful substitutes in the several Ages respectively by personal substitution of each Predecessor respectively whilest he was yet living and therefore no such Act can convey the Authority of the Apostles to any who is ambitious of pretending to it in our present Age. § VI 4. THEREFORE the force of this Negative Argument consisting in this that that cannot be the Apostles Act in a later Age which is not the Act of any of those who derive their substitution from them by personal Acts in the several Ages it will not hold but only in the only substitutes For supposing the Apostles substituted many in the first Age as certainly they did it will not follow that he who has not received his Authority from the Succession of Jerusalem for example has therefore not received it from the Apostles at all because he may have received it from the Succession of Antioch or any other Apostolical See But considering the whole complex of substitutes in every Age certainly the reason will hold that he who has derived his Authority from none of them must as certainly fail of deriving his Authority from the Apostles as if he had lived in the Age immediately succeeding the Apostles and yet had not received his Authority from any of them who had in the former Age received their Authority by a personal Act of the Apostles themselves The reasoning still holds the same how many soever the Ages of Succession are Neither can any Authority be given by the Apostles in the fifteenth Century which is not given by their substitutes then existing nor can they then be taken for their Successors who have not been substituted by several personal Acts of their immediate Predecessors through all the foregoing Period § VII AND this I therefore take for the imprudence of managing this Argument hitherto that recourse has been always had to the Primitive times as if the Succession had not been as much interrupted by a failure in later Ages as if it had failed then By which way of proceeding they both weakened the evidence of the Argument and withal made it less popular They weakened the Argument both as to its strength and as to its evidence As to its strength because what had indeed Succession then might fail of it in after Ages And therefore though our Adversaries Hypothesis had been true that single Presbyters had the Power of ordeining others given them when they were made Presbyters and therefore that the Persons ordeined by them then had been validly ordeined yet it is very possible that their Succession might fail afterwards and that later Presbyters might never have that Power given them which if they have not that is alone sufficient to disanul their present Ordinations And therefore the securest way of proving the validity of present Ordinations is to prove the uninterruptedness of their Succession down to our modern times not to rest contented with what was in the beginning but might have been since interrupted § VIII THEY weakened the evidence of the Argument by resolving it into Primitive Records in which way of proceeding it is very possible that many Records might have been lost nay it is most certain that many were so which though it be no Argument at all to prove that any thing was not from the beginning which we do not find mentioned in our remaining Records yet it is certainly a weakening the evidence of the Succession if the tryal be resolved into such Records as might have miscarried As certainly no secular Magistrate of a Corporation in this Age could make his title so clear if he were to prove it from the Records of all his Predecessors since the Charter was granted which may very well have miscarried in a much shorter Succession than that which is requisite for justifying our present Ordinations as if he be immediately allowed to resolve his title into the Charter as it has been found in unquestionable Practice and into his immediate Predecessors And this is the rather solid because it is a Principle agreed on for the security of all Governments to presume they came from the beginning unless there appear very probable evidence to the contrary though possibly their being from the beginning cannot be expresly proved from Primitive Records after the miscarriages of so many Generations And when God was pleased to settle a Government among men it is most likely that he would suit it as he did many other things of far less importance to Humane understanding and even to those of the vulgar who are as much concerned in Government as the Learned and that he would accordingly expect their Obedience according to the Rules of Humane equity And there is less reason to believe that he would oblige Ecclesiastical Government to depend on express Records than Secular not only because it is designed much more lasting than any Secular form of Government and Records are more apt to miscarry in a longer tract of time but also because the Persecutions to which they are exposed more than any other Societies
intend to follow the Doctrines I do not say of the Aerians who had been reckoned in the Catalogues of Hereticks S. Augustini Epiphanli long before their own times but even of the Wiclevists and Waldenses who had been more lately censured for mainteining the equality of Bishops and Presbyters They who know how odious the name of Heretick was in those days and how express condemnations of them were required from Persons who were to be admitted to preferments and how these Catalogues and Councils who had censured these Persons were the Standards whereby such Persons were obliged to judg who were Hereticks they I say cannot believe that the Bishops of that Age could have kept either their Communion or their Preferments if they had been of our Adversaries mind in asserting the Order and Character of Episcopacy to have been the same with that of Priesthood And they must still remember that it is by what was mainteined by them with a good conscience that we must judg what Power was actually designed for the Presbyters ordeined by them We must not therefore understand these Opinions so as to think that the Persons who mainteined them in the Ages we are speaking of intended to exclude all difference between the two Offices And if any difference were acknowledged it must have been this of Ordination which St. Hierome himself the principal Author of this Opinion had acknowledged for such an inseparable peculiar Prerogative of Episcopacy And therefore we have all the reason we can desire to presume that even Persons of this Perswasion in that Age did intend to reserve this Power from the Presbyters that were ordeined by them § XVI FOR it is particularly considerable that this case of theirs is not capable of that Apology for submitting to an unjust Government which is usually and I think very justly made use of to excuse St. Hierome He indeed seems to have thought that in the Apostles Age the Presbyters had a greater interest in the Government of the Church than was allowed them in his own But this did not hinder his submission to the Government even of his own time though it had not been so just nay did not hinder him from thinking that it might then have a very just though an only humane right It was his sense not of the Government in the Apostles times but of the Government of his own times that concerned his present practice But that which these Persons taught who made Bishops and Presbyteries of the same Order concerned not only the Apostles Age but their own They thought them still to be not only de Jure but de Facto of the same Order and therefore could not think themselves under any higher Duty to their Bishops than what was consistent with their being of the same Order And therefore if this had allowed them a Power of Ordeining others why did they not challenge that Power why did they suffer the Bishops to ingross it to themselves and to secure their present Vsurpations to posterity for ever by an unquestioned peaceable prescription Could not any one bold Spirit be found who would stand up for the honour of his Order Could neither interest nor conscience neither animate some to give a preâ—edent of contradicting it they do not seem in those Ages to have been generally so meâ—k and so fearful of disturbing the publick Peace for what they thought to be their right Mighty quarrels were then engaged on for matters of incomparably more trivial concernment and where withal they had less interest either to provoke or animate them than here And if indeed they had thought of any such consequences as they must have thought if their meaning in this Assertion were such as our Adversaries are apt to understand it to have been how came it to pass that it escaped the censures of their then present Superiors Is it likely that it could have escaped those censures in such an Age wherein policy was their principal study and the principal employment of their zeal was the maintenance of their present establishments Did none of these Persons who mainteined these Opinions ever come themselves to be Governours And if their Opinions altered with their Interests must they not then have been conscious of the ill consequence and mischievousness of what they had mainteined formerly If none of them had been conscious of these things from their own experience yet sure their jealousie and the momentousness of the thing would have made them suspicious though they wanted solid grounds if they had only likelihoods And these suspicions were sufficient to have awakened all their diligence for suppressing them When I consider these things I cannot but think that the Persons who then mainteined this Opinion concerning the identity of the Order of Bishops and Presbyters must needs have been very far from thinking of any consequence prejudicial to their present establishments much less from attempting any thing in practice till pure necessity as well as opportunity forced them upon it They did not therefore pretend to excuse Presbyters from the least instance of their Canonical Obedience to their Ordinary even of that Obedience which was prescribed by the Canons of those times So far it is from being probable that they intended to give them the peculiar prerogative of the Bishop the Power of ordeining others nay so far do they seem from so much as judging it fit in Conscience that this Power should be given to them who were then ordeined Presbyters And yet from what has been already said it appears sufficiently that nothing short of their actual intentions to give them this Power can suffice to legitimate our Brethrens present Ordinations CHAP. XXIV The Nullity of the Ordinations of the Non-Conformists proved from the Power of the Bishops even as Presidents over the Presbyteries THE CONTENTS § I 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
design of settling these Assemblies seems to be for the establishment of this Negative that nothing might be taken for the act of the Society which is not the act of some such Assembly But yet proceeding on the Principles on which I have hitherto proceeded in this whole Discourse the Argument will have yet more force For supposing that the whole right of these Assemblies could not have proceeded from the bare consent of the Society but from the actual establishment of God the Society it self then can have no more power in the matter we are speaking of than what it can derive from the constitution of those Assemblies and therefore whatever were acted out of these Assemblies can never convey a right of the Society how validly soever it have been acted as to the real consent of the particular Members pretended for it 3. BY the same common Laws of all Assemblies of this nature § IV no Assemblies can dispose of the right of such Societies but such as are lawful ones according to the constitutions of the Societies This is also agreed on in the practice of Societies of this nature by as unanimous a consent as the former As out of Assemblies they have no power to act who might act in them how many soever of the suffrages and how freely soever also had been gotten so all those Meetings how numerous soever for acts of Government if they be not Legal they add nothing of advantage to the power of particulars singly considered They are not in the eye of the Law Assemblies but Routs and their concurrence not consent but confederacy And as it were Rebellion in particular Persons to attempt any thing of that nature concerning the Government without the consent of their present established Governours so neither is there any thing in such a meeting that can give them any more power as united than they had as they were singly considered that may excuse them from Rebellion Nay rather by the Principles of all Societies that which had not been Rebellion if done singly is counted so if it be done in unlawful Assemblies And sure none can think it reasonable that the Society should be obliged to ratifie the acts of Rebels It is not fit that any of its Authority should be given into such hands much less is it fit that being given them by Persons as criminal as themselves the Commonwealth should encourage the like undutifulness in others by ratifying what is done by these § V BUT besides as it is not fit so neither is it just that the Society should be obliged by the act of Persons unauthorized by her nay of Rebels against her Authority And the very reason why Rules are agreed on what Assemblies shall be counted lawful and what not seems plainly to be that it may be known by what Assemblies the whole Society shall be represented and by what they shall not be so And if the Society be not represented by unlawful Assemblies how can it in Justice be obliged by them How can any of its Legal rights be disposed of by them who are not its Legal Representatives All Societies are sensible of the great danger to the publick that may follow from promiscuous Assemblies not only what corrupt Arts may be used in them for depraving the sentences of Persons otherwise of themselves never so justly disposed but also what seditious practices may be fomented and driven on for a forcible execution of such corrupt sentences and embroiling the publick in intestine animosities And therefore the very design of these Rules seems to be for preventing this corruption and disorder And the most natural way of that is by abrogating the acts of such Assemblies Which antecedent Rules whether they be from God or from the People are notwithstanding from that power by which the Society it self and all its particular Assemblies subsist and consequently of greater power than any particular Assemblies And therefore it cannot be admired that the ratification of particular Assemblies should depend upon it § VI 4. THEREFORE 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 But especially this by the Rules of all Societies is understood to be the inseparable prerogative of that Office when by the fundamental constitutions of the Societies themselves no certain places nor periods of time are agreed on for the keeping of any For as the very reason of ascertaining Rules for making Assemblies seems to be purposely to restrain the Liberty of particular Members to assemble when they please for the inconveniences now mentioned so withal there must be some who may have the power of assembling them when they judg it convenient for the publick and who may withal be allowed for competent Judges of that convenience For their having no certain time allotted for them plainly implies that they are to be celebrated as occasion requires And when every one is not permitted to judg of the occasion and to meet when he pleases and yet withal it is impossible they should ever meet unless some be allowed to judg when there is a fit occasion and to oblige others to be determined by them it plainly follows that it must be presumed that the Society is not destitute of a power which is so absolutely necessary for the practicableness of Assemblies and therefore that this power must be presumed to be in some though none be expresly mentioned for it But there is none concerning whom this power can be so probably presumed none so likely to have been mentioned if any had been mentioned none to whom all undisposed power does by the common Rules of all Societies so naturally escheat as the President of the Assemblies Even in the Assemblies a veneration is due to him for his Office above all other Members but much more so out of the Assemblies when none is in a likely way to be able to oppose him by the Laws of the Societies whether singly or conjunctly which must needs give him the preference above all other particular Members where none are expresly mentioned For certainly he who calls an Assembly must have some advantage over all the Members called by him that he may oblige them to convene and it is necessary for the publick that they may be obliged to meet when they are so called that is when the Judg of circumstances thinks it necessary for the publick good in present circumstances But there is none who can pretend to this advantage I do not say of Jurisdiction but even of Authority and Reverence above his Fellow-members besides the President § VII BESIDES the power of particular Members in such Assemblies expires with the Assemblies themselves so that in the intervals of Assemblies there remains no more of that power in any of them which they have in Assemblies But the convening of the Assemblies is an act of Authority in that very interval
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
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
certain that both are not than this that where it is on no account customary to include one power in the gift of the other as it is not customary to include a superior power in giving an inferior there it is to be presumed that is was not intended to be given and therefore that the gift of the other power must be invalid if one cannot be validly given alone But where it is reasonable or usual to include the one in the other there it is reasonable to presume that both were intended to be given because the Person cannot in such a case be supposed willing to null his own gift which on this supposition he must do if he do not give both together because he must inevitably either give all or nothing CHAP. XXVI The right of particular Episcopal Jurisdictions THE CONTENTS 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 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 he 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 Obligations 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 § I 2. THE Episcopal Communion to which every particular Person is obliged to join 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 do not say that the ordinary means of Salvation are to be had no where but in any one particular Diocess I do not say but that those same ordinary Administrations of Sacraments which are available to the Salvation of those who belong to other Dioceses and do there partake of them might also be available to the Salvation of any of another Diocess if he were out of his own Jurisdiction which he must needs be if he communicate in another Diocess Nor further do I say that any one is so obliged by his Baptismal vow in any one Diocess to continue in that Diocess for his whole Life as that it would be a violation of his Baptismal obligation for him to remove elsewhere especially if he removed according to the custom of the Primitive times with the Communicatory and Dimissory Letters of the Ordinary of his own original Diocess When our Adversaries prove any of these things let them not think that they disprove any thing which I have undertaken to defend nor that my cause does oblige me to defend All that I design at present and which I am sorry that it will in the consequence of it concern our Adversaries so severely is to prove the obligation that lies on every Member of a particular Diocess to submit to all the unsinful impositions of the Diocess whilst he lives in it For which it is sufficient that that particular Communion be as necessary to him in opposition to all other Communions which may be had within that same Jurisdiction without the consent of those to whose Jurisdiction it belongs as it is necessary that he communicate at all For as I have shewn that communicating in general will oblige the Communicant to a dependence on those without whose consent such Communion cannot be had and a dependence so great as may oblige him rather to submit to any impositions short of sin in submitting to them than to lose the external participation of the Sacraments so by the same proportion of reason if no other Communion can safely be embraced but that which depends on the Governours of that Jurisdiction to which the person I speak of is supposed to belong this will oblige him to as great a dependence on that particular Jurisdiction so long as he belongs to it § II AND that I may make my Discourse on this Subject useful to all sorts of Non-Conformists I conceive it necessary to reason with them differently according to the difference of Principles admitted by them that so none of them may want that evidence which may be necessary for their conviction As for those who do not admit of rational consequences from truths acknowledged by themselves it is vain to reason with them at all For all Discourse is nothing else but an inferring of something which is not granted from something which is so But this can never oblige any such Person to believe such Inferences true if he doubt whether real consequences from his own Assertions might not be false though his Assertions themselves were very true There is therefore no dealing with such Persons by reason but they must inevitably be left to their own Enthusiasm The rest therefore who admit of rational consequences I shall consider in two ranks 1. Of those who admit of an Authority obliging antecedently to the acts of particular Persons under which I think I might rank the Presbyterians generally if they were true to their own Principles that is if in arguing against the Church they would be wary of any other Principles but such as themselves admit in their disputes against the Independents and 2. Of those who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedent to the voluntary Obligations of particular Persons And of this sort are the Independents and others downwards These men when they have 1. denied the
And it cannot be reasonable for them to judg others to be undutiful unless they suppose their reasons such as may not only perswade themselves but may also prevail on all others who use that industry and ingenuity which the moment of the thing would require from them But the evidence must be much greater which may encourage men to judg of the industry or ingenuity of those who dissent from themselves than what may suffice for their own satisfaction Probable appearances of things to themselves may be very prudent reasons to incline men rather to one side of a disputable question But that cannot make it reasonable for them to believe that others who are more judicious and sagacious than themselves are all obliged to be of their mind and must either be wanting in their industry or ingenuity if they be not so Yet some cases there are which are so very evident as that men may judg concerning them for others how judicious soever as well as for themselves But then the evidence must be so great as may exceed all that whereby we may judg concerning the industry or ingenuity of others For in this case only it is reasonable to suspect the disingenuity or negligence of others rather than their want of conviction in case they dissent from us And therefore thus great the evidence must be by which Governours must judg concerning the punishableness of Dissenters But the evidence by which they must judg of the conviction their Subjects may have of the right of such Governours to govern them must yet be presumed by so much greater than the evidence of their particular Decrees by how much the evidence of Principles ought to be greater than that of the inferences deduced from those Principles For the knowledg of the Persons who are to govern us is indeed the first Principle of the practicableness of any visible Government § VII HENCE it follows 5. That those notorious and agreed means by which Subjects may be enabled to judg to whose Government they do particularly belong must be from God And if it be from him it is no matter whether it be from him immediately or whether it be derived from him by the Ministry of men empowered by him and who are empowered by virtue of their general Authority received from him to make provision even for this particular case It suffices that God will account resistance to Superiors whose right is discoverable by such notorious Rules as a resistance to Governours established by himself and I believe this is all of which our dissenting Brethren themselves will desire to be satisfied And that this is so will easily appear from the Principles already premised For if all must be presumed to come from God which is necessary for the practicableness of the Government established by him and the knowledg of their particular Governours be necessary for the practice of the duty of particular Subjects and no other means be proper for this knowledg of their Governours but such as are agreed and notorious it must then follow that God must have provided some such means And then considering that this distinction of Jurisdictions is such a means for Subjects to distinguish to whose Government they belong seeing that this was a means agreed on by all and notoriously in use long before the rise of them who first began to question Jurisdictions it cannot be denied to be very becoming the care of God that this should be settled by him But on the other side considering also that the means assigned by our Adversaries different from this of Jurisdiction are neither notorious nor agreed on by any but themselves or those who have innovated with them who cannot in any equity be allowed to be competent Judges in a matter of this nature wherein the whole Community is concerned even those also who dissent from them who have the advantage of Number as well as of Prescription against them I say these things being considered these cannot be taken for means of Gods appointment And therefore the settlement of Jurisdictions is not only a proper means but the only means by which all must be concluded in this matter And therefore they must either be acknowledged obligatory by divine right or God cannot be supposed to have made those provisions which are absolutely necessary for making the Government established by him practicable This must follow from their finding it already settâ—ed to their hands when they first began their Innovations that by whomsoever these Jurisdictions were first introduced yet they were not introduced without the Divine approbation Which is enough to oblige all them who find it grounded on such a right to submit to it But according to the Principles of those of our Adversaries who allow the Church a power to determine particular circumstances not expresly determined in the Scriptures but yet necessary for the practice of those general rules which are already prescribed there the institution it self must be acknowledged Divine not only providentially but also in regard of the Authority by which it was introduced not only because the Church's Authority in general proceeds from God but also because she is by these Principles authorized to exercise her power in this very matter which I am now discoursing of seeing this determination of Jurisdictions has appeared to be no other but a determination of particular circumstances requisite for the practicableness of Government in general § VIII NOR can they think it strange in reason that the right of these Jurisdictions should be Divine notwithstanding that the limitation of them depends on men especially when by these Principles those men must be supposed to be seconded by a Divine Authority There is hardly any instance of a Divine Authority which does not as to some particular requisite for practice need the accession of a Humane Authority Yet none thinks the obligation resulting from the complex of both to be therefore any thing the less Divine Who doubts but that the Authority even of these particular Books of Scripture which we now receive for Scripture is Divine Yet it is impossible to prove that these particular Books were written by those particular Authors whose names they bear on which notwithstanding the credit of their being Divinely inspired does necessarily depend but by the same way as we prove other matters of Fact that is by Humane Historical Testimony Many believe that the right of Secular Government is Divine and that the punishment of Rebellious Persons is accordingly such as those deserve who resist the Ordinance of God himself Nay this plainly seems to be the design of the Apostles reasoning Rom. xiii 2 Yet there is no present Government in our parts where the determination of the particular Persons who are to govern is not wholly performed by men by men not pretending to inspiration nor yet on that account expecting any extraordinary Revelation The use of Lots and Anguries which might look like consulting the Gods in the matter
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
particular Governours This therefore cannot be founded on the Authority of particular Governours whose Authority is wholly grounded on it but only on the Authority of God whose Authority alone is antecedent to the Authorities of particular Jurisdictions § XII NOR can this be thought strange in Ecclesiastical Government which is so acknowledged in Civils There are also in them some Laws of the like universal concernment on which the right of all Civil Jurisdictions depend and which are therefore as impossible to be derived from the Authority of particular Governours and as necessary to be derived from God alone Such are the Laws of Nature and of Nations the breach whereof has by all wise men been always thought most piacular and most properly obnoxious to the punishment of God himself Which is a consideration very worthy to be laid to heart by our dissenting Brethren whether it be not equally applicable to this present Subject concerning the right of particular Jurisdictions And if this be acknowledged to be the truth of this matter that the Divine Authority is thus resisted by this disobedience to Humane Jurisdictions what can more agreeably be expected as the punishment of such resistance than that they who are guilty of such resistance by any acknowledgment of a power independent on the Governours of their Jurisdictions should at least lose the advantages they might otherwise expect from the Society to which they joyn themselves I mean those advantages which might otherwise be expected from a conjunction with them considered as a Society especially such advantages as are only to be immediately performed by God whom they must by these Principles be supposed to have disobliged Which will make it reasonable to believe that the Sacraments received against the Authority of these Jurisdictions shall not actually have the benefit of Sacraments and therefore shall not actually contribute to the forgiveness of sins or the giving of the Holy Ghost the way whereby Sacraments are supposed to contribute to them Nay instead of that such communications will incur the guilt of Sacriledg on the same account as Corah and his company were guilty of it though they were consecrated Persons for transgressing the bounds allowed them by the order prescribed by God But how much more must it be so when Persons not having any Consecration at all shall presume to encroach on those sacred rights of their own Superiors which God himself who gave them those rights does hence appear obliged to preserve inviolable § XIII AND indeed I do not understand how the Presbyterians can with any shew of reason defend their own practice of Authority without acknowledging this right of Jurisdictions How can they justifie the Authority of their National and Provincial Synods over all those who live within the Province or Nation represented in the Synods How can they challenge it even over the Independents themselves who live among them notwithstanding their profession of a different Judgment from them notwithstanding their disowning any act whereby they have obliged themselves to submit to their Authority distinct from the Baptism which they have received among them How can they have the confidence to charge even them with Schism for refusing to submit to them or for gathering Churches out of their Parishes if the living within the districts of a Parish could give them no peculiar title to those who did so What can they call this right they pretend to over Persons living within their districts antecedently to any act of their own distinct from their Baptism if it be not Jurisdiction For my part I profess I mean no more at present nor am I sensible that my cause obliges me to mean any more And can they allow of Jurisdiction in Parishes only and not in those greater Bodies which are only Aggregates of Parishes The Authority they challenge to their Provincial and National Synods does plainly shew they cannot do so And how can they possibly deny the same right and reason of Jurisdiction to the Parishes and Diocesses wherein their first Predecessors were baptized How can they think the same Episcopal Jurisdiction any more impaired by their own irregular practices since than they think their own Jurisdiction impaired by the like irregular practices of the Independents They who acknowledg a right over particular Christians antecedently to their own act as these generally do when they speak consequently to their own Principles must needs acknowledg that the power so antecedent to private suffrages may constitute what rules they please for distinguishing the limits of the proportion of particular Governours So that such Persons cannot with any shew of reason doubt of the obligingness of such rules of Jurisdiction when they are once established but only whether this particular rule of judging by the districts of place be established by that antecedent Power But of this there can be no doubt in our present case because there is no other way so much as pretended by our Adversaries themselves for distinguishing the limits of particular Jurisdictions § XIV BUT I proceed to shew 2. How the same thing may be proved against them who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedent to the voluntary Obligations of particular Persons I have already observed how much more consequently these men speak to their Principles than the Presbyterians And it is indeed impossible that these men should own the Authority of Jurisdictions if they will be true to their Principles But then the great reason why it is impossible is particularly that Principle and the consequences of it that they think the obligatory right of all Ecclesiastical power derived from the particular Personal consent of every particular Member and that distinct from his consent to be a Member that is from his consent to Baptism If this be overthrown then the reasons will return which I have urged against those who grant a power in the Church obligatory of all baptized Persons living among them antecedently to their personal Contracts For there is no middle way of dealing in this case They who disown the Original of power to be seated in the people if they own any Ecclesiastical power at all they must needs place it originally in the Governours No third seat can or that I know of has been ever thought of And if it be originally in the Governours then it must be there antecedently to the consent of particular private persons and being so must also oblige antecedently to their consent for it is a contradiction to speak of power without obligation And if so then whoever is a Member of the Church is a Subject of its Government and whoever is a Member of the visible Church is by the same reason a Subject of its visible Government But none can deny that it is the visible Church as well as the invisible of which Baptism makes us Members nay many of our Adversaries especially will say that it is the visible Church rather than the invisible Whence it will follow that none who
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
for my purpose For my design is not to implead our Adversaries on the merit of the cause of their separation from us but to shew their obligation to yield on their part how confident soever they may be that they have the truth on their side and that their Superiors are mistaken For this purpose therefore it is necessary that the Vnity of the Church be supposed such as may be culpably broken by them who hold the right side of the Controversie if the truth it self be not of that moment as to justifie a separation and if it be not the denial of any the least truth that is required as a condition of peace but only a condescension in practice And if it appear that the Vnity of particular Churches for which alone I am immediately concerned in this whole Discourse is that of Bodies Politick that the things required from our Brethren in order to a solid peace are required by their Superiors that they are justly and properly their Subjects and owe to these Superiors a duty not of reverence only but also of Subjection that therefore the obligation of yielding is incumbent on them and that in all things short of sin that for mainteining this Vnity of Bodies Politick it is absolutely necessary that Subjects be obedient actively in all things lawful and passively even in things unlawful and that this passive obedience obliges Subjects to abstein from either erecting or abetting any opposite Societies I say if these things appear it will then follow that our Adversaries in mainteining opposite Assemblies to their lawful Ecclesiastical Governours on what pretence soever of mal-administration of the Government short of Heresie which can alone make Governours uncapable of the right of Government must become guilty of a culpable breach of the Churches Vnity which is that which is properly meant by the true Notion of Schism Now all these things prove true on the management of our present Hypothesis § III 1. THAT the Persons requiring these things at their hands are properly their Governours and consequently that the Society for whose Vnity they are concerned is properly a Body Politick will both of them follow from each other and will appear from the same proofs 1. Therefore they who have the power of rewards and punishments have the power of Government And especially if their power be not only a power of actual possession but also of right then they must also be acknowledged to have the right of Government which will oblige Subjects to submission even where they cannot be compelled to it on the same Principles of Conscience by which they are obliged without Humane compulsion to pay every one that which is rightfully their due For it is by these rewards and punishments that Government is administred that Subjects are induced or compelled to their duty and as it is impossible for Government to be administred without them so it is also as impossible to suppose that he who has the power of rewards and punishments can be restrained from the power of governing them whom they can punish and reward If these things be only actually in their power they can actually necessitate them to Subjection But if they also possess them rightfully that must oblige them to a Subjection even in conscience § IV 2. THEREFORE they who alone have the power of the benefits of any Society must also be supposed to have the power of its rewards and punishments For indeed all rewards are only a conferring of those benefits and all punishments are only deprivations of them Thus it is in civil things because the power of the Sword extends to all worldly enjoyments therefore he who has this has it in his power to confer these enjoyments or to deprive of them at his pleasure From whence it is that his Subjects find themselves obliged to pay their duty to him on account of their own interest as they value these fruitions of worldly good things or their deprivations And therefore if it be in the power of any Order of men to dispose of those benefits which are to be expected from Christian Societies as Societies to admit or exclude whom they please from them this must for the same reason put it as much in their power to oblige all to a compliance with them who value the priviledges of this Society as the power of the Sword enables them who have it to oblige all to a submission to them who value the priviledges of their secular Societies This will as properly put it in their power to reward or punish the obedience or disobedience of their Ecclesiastical Subjects as the power of the Sword does put it in the power of secular Governours to reward or punish the dutiful or undutiful behaviour of them who are their Subjects in temporals especially considering § V 3. THAT the benefits here spoken of are the benefits of the Christian Society as a Society Whoever has it in his power to gratifie another in any thing he stands in need of has it consequently in his power to oblige him who needs it to comply with him on any condition less afflictive than the loss of it to him who stands in need of it And by how much the thing is more valuable and more necessary by so much stricter will his obligation be to compliance But yet this will not give the Person in whose power the gratification is a proper Authority and Jurisdiction over him whom he has power to gratifie unless the gratification be of that kind that it is necessary to him as a Member of the Society and therefore which may be necessary for all other Members as well as himself Whoever has it thus in his power to oblige any Member as a Member must have a universal power over all the Members which he who has must by a necessary consequence have a power of obliging the whole Society And certainly this power of obliging the whole Society will amount to that which we call properly Authority if any thing deserve that name Especially § VI 4. IF the benefits in the power of such Persons be necessary to the Members on account of Conscience and if withal they think themselves obliged to believe in Conscience that they are not to expect these gratifications from any other If the benefits necessary to all Members of the Society be necessary on account of Conscience then all Members must think themselves obliged in Conscience to comply in order to the obteining them And if withal they think themselves obliged in Conscience to believe the appropriation of this power to them they must needs believe that they receive it from God who as he has alone the power of ratifying all these exercises of this power so he has consequently a power to invest whom he pleases with this power And as this power does necessarily infer a power of Government so it must necessarily be supposed that God foresaw that it would do so and therefore that he did
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
by any one before he could be qualifyed for judging concerning them he must in the same prudence think it the safest course to relie on the judgment of such as were skilful And when he must in pursuance of this discourse find himself obliged to trust some guide there are peculiar reasons why he should in prudence submit himself to the guidance of his Ecclesiastical Superiors rather than any others Besides the equal skilfulness of such Superiors with any others who might pretend to guide him besides the peculiar obligation of providence to direct them who as Superiors have so many presumptions in favour of them to oblige others to acquiesce in their determinations and therefore whose errors must in this regard prove of so fatal consequence to the prejudice of Multitudes of good and well-meaning Persons I say besides these things he will hereby secure himself the use of the ordinary means of Salvation which must needs be acknowledged to be a very prudent and affecting consideration to sway a doubtful practice He who were truâ—â— sensible how much he must be a loser by living out of all 〈◊〉 so as to want those ordinary Assistances to which Communicants are intitled and which a daily experience of his own frailties would make him very unwilling to want and were withal sensible how not only fruitless but mischievous it would be to gain the external Elements in an unwarrantable Communion would find that within him which would never suffer him to forfeit the external Communion of the Church but upon reasons extremely weighty and considerable As nothing under sin would be judged a sufficient reason so neither would any evidence concerning the sinfulness of a condition of Communion be judged sufficient but such as were drawn from the nature of the thing not from any contrary Humane Authority nor even any such evidence from the nature of the thing which were not of greater importance and more convictive than those which recommend the credibility of Ecclesiastical Authority Which will yet further diminish the number of the doubts of this kind Which might be supposed incident to candid though illiterate persons § XVII BUT let us suppose them advanced yet higher to be convinced by reasons intrinsick to the thing of its sinfulness and suppose we those reasons stronger than the reasons of credibility of their Ecclesiastical Superiors all that would follow even so would be that it ought not to be done for the credit of any Humane Authority that should call it lawful But may it not be sometimes done when it cannot be omitted without a greater sin Will it not in such a case cease to be a sin when both are unavoidable Undoubtedly it will if its sinfulness depend on circumstances which is the most our Adversaries can pretend concerning our conditions of Communion For from our Principles it has appeared that the sins of disobedience to Ecclesiastical Superiors and of dividing the Church or separating from it are of a higher guilt than can be pretended to be in those sinful conditions even according to them who believe the conditions sinful They will not pretend the sin of wearing a Surplice c. equal to the sin unto death to that against the Holy Ghost or those spoken of Heb. VI. or X. § XVIII BUT if the real sinfulness of such a condition be yet further supposed not to be circumstantial but in the nature of the thing absolutely considered then I confess the thing is by no means to be done not that it is at any hand lawful to avoid it by flying into a greater sin but because there is no necessity of doing either He that cannot communicate but on conditions which he believes sinful may forbear the Communion which he cannot keep but on such conditions But such forbearance would be no sin as separation would be even in such a case For still dividing of the Church disrespect to Superiors usurpation of a Sacred Power or abetting such an usurpation would be as essentially and unalterably sinful as such conditions of Communion could be pretended to be And therefore even in such a case he would continue as much obliged to avoid separation as to avoid the Communion which could not be had without such sinful compliances Nay by so much the more as the sinfulness of such a separation must be supposed greater than the sinfulness of such a Communion Which will let even the ignorant Person I am speaking of see his obligation to passive obedience where he cannot pay active to his Ecclesiastical Superiors and that this duty of his passive obedience will oblige him to forbear opposite Communions even where he cannot by any lawful compliances enjoy the lawful one This does at least reach the case of Laicks and with regard to Communions destitute of sufficient Authority for which I am at present concerned § XIX BUT besides this general suitableness of our Hypothesis for practice It is particularly considerable 2. That it is peculiarly suited to the practice of a Society of such a nature as the Church for preserving Vnity and a due respect to Authority in it For the Church as a Body Politick must always preserve a coercive power over her own Subjects And that 1. As well in persecution as prosperity For persecution was indeed the principal let she had reason to expect when her Government was first established and for which it is therefore most credible that her Government then was peculiarly fitted and therefore she must have been enabled to maintein this Authority independently on the favour of the secular Magistrate And therefore 2. She must have been enabled for this purpose without any title to the Bodies or Fortunes of her Subjects and so without any power of using coercive means of these kinds whether by employing her obedient Subjects to inflict such penalties on her disobedient ones or by moving the secular Magistrate to it Because these are things to which as she can pretend no right as a Spiritual Society so she cannot expect to have them actually in her power in such a time of persecution § XX NOW for mainteining such a coercive power in a Society under such disadvantages It is plain 1. That the Authority must be purely Spiritual and coercive only over the consciences of its Subjects It must be Spiritual because Christ has given his Officers by vertue of their being Officers of his Church no title to any temporals at all And therefore they cannot by virtue of their being his Officers have so much as a good title to dispossess their Subjects of their Lives or Fortunes It can only be over their Subjects consciences because by want of their title to externals they can have no coercive power over their Bodies And therefore what coercive power they have must be over their consciences or they can have none at all Whence it will follow that they must needs destroy all coercive power in the Church who pretend that Ecclesiastical Laws do not oblige the
are which disprove things whose truth appears by Principles much more notorious and more confessed and more certain than those are by which they are disproved nay which go against those general presumptions for practice which the prudence of the generality of the unconcerned part of mankind have agreed on as much more certain than any evidence that can be pretended to the contrary and which therefore all that own those Principles must acknowledg to be false though they do not as yet understand the particular Sophism Nay it is no more thought prudent to be scrupulous in practice on subtilties pretending to disprove what appears true upon such Principles than Diogenes thought himself concerned to forbear motion because Zeno offered to prove it impossible or to vouchsafe such Objections a serious answer And when these disputes are cut off how few will there remain that can perplex the illiterate Reader What numbers of our Adversaries Volumns will he find himself unconcerned in how easie will it be to find the Truth in these matters in comparison of what it is commonly understood and must be so by him who has not considered the things here suggested But besides the multitude of disputes which are here avoided § XLVIII 2. ANOTHER thing that will very much facilitate the Judgment concerning these things to an illiterate Reader is that the remaining disputes are reduced to such things which even illiterate Persons must be supposed experienced in even in their worldly affairs It is hardly possible even for such a Person to be ignorant of the nature of Contracts in general and of the general equity and measures of their obligation they are of so familiar inevitable use to him in his worldly conversation He cannot but even there find it reputed very ill in any to put another seal to a Covenant without his Authority If himself were served so he would not only think himself in no equity obliged to stand to such a Covenant but would certainly resent it as a great injury done to him He finds this yet more severely thought of by all communities in conveyances of power that it is Treason by the fundamental Laws of all Societies not only for a Person to presume to seal himself either a Pardon or a Patent for Authority without leave from the supreme visible Magistrates but also for all such as abet or defend him in it or own any Authority in him by virtue of such an invalid patent He knows himself how illiterate soever would be proceeded against as a Traitor if he should offend in either of these kinds against the Community wherein he lives He knows conveyances of power ought to be notorious and are every where presumed to be so because no pretence of ignorance is accepted of by any community to excuse any who are found guilty of any irregularities of this kind He knows Succession is the way every where agreed on for conveyances of power especially of the supreme visible power And he may find how impossible it is to think of any other notorious way for the satisfaction of others how Ecclesiastical power could be derived from Christ or the Apostles through the distance of seventeen Ages especially where it is acknowledged that God does not now give any power immediately He will find that by the same rules of equity a presumptive title is sufficient in present Governours where it cannot be certainly disproved and that what we have said concerning the equity of Gods dealing with men will make it more particularly credible in the conveyance of Ecclesiastical Government that therefore as in a disputable title to secular Government none thinks it necessary to be informed of all past ages for example to prove the title of our present Princes from the Caesars who were once rightfully possessed of these parts of the World but thinks it reasonable to rest satisfied with the original of the last innovation so neither can it be necessary for knowing the want of Ecclesiastical power in present pretenders to it to enquire into the times of the Apostles that succession is as perfectly ruined by a failure of 200 as by one of 1600 years standing that by this means he is concerned to know as little History for the title of the present Non-conformist Ministers as he is obliged to know for knowing which part to joyn with where different parties are made for an ambiguous title to secular Government I would not on this occasion recapitulate the Heads of my whole discourse These general Heads are sufficient to shew that the materials are generally such as even ordinary illiterate Persons who have but that prudence which is requisite for managing their secular affairs are competent Judges of them and are supposed to be so by the general proceedings of all Societies and disinteressed Judges They can neither be assured of the secular Government they live under nor of several Tenures of their Lands and Charters nor of their unrepealed Laws without recourse to Originals of as difficult enquiry as these are which will suffice for the question of SCHISM upon the Principles here promoted § XLIX AND this same experience in their worldly affairs will enable them to judg of the unexcusableness of the sin of SCHISM as well as of the Persons who are guilty of it It is undoubtedly a great mischief even to such capacities to be deprived of all title to those advantages which we enjoy by virtue of the Evangelical Contract And to such as these who are led generally by sense and are therefore very inclinable to disbelieve the being of that which does not appear to them it must be a prevailing Argument to distrust their interest in the Covenant when they see themselves deprived of the external Solemnities by which this interest in the Covenant it self is ordinarily gotten and mainteined The equity of the Covenant is too subtile a thing for these to judg or to be confident of when they find themselves uncapable of a Legal claim And yet if they were to judg of the obligation of the Divine equity by those rules which they should think equal for themselves if they were obliged as God is they could not think God obliged even in equity in the matter we are speaking of If themselves had made a Covenant upon condition of the performance of the solemnities of it by the Persons with whom they had been pleased thus to Covenant they will not think themselves obliged to give the gift upon non-performance of the condition though the performance had in the event proved impossible And of such a nature the Covenant of God with mankind appears to be upon our Principles His promises are meer gifts and therefore upon non-performance he must be supposed to return to the same freedom whether he will give them again wherein he was before the Covenant was made Nay though the condition to be performed had been a valuable consideration and so had been a ground of equity upon non-performance of the
Solemnities yet if they had never Covenanted without the Solemnities and had expresly declared these Solemnities to be the only instruments by which they would oblige themselves they would not think themselves obliged so much as in equity to performance on their own part unless the Person concerned had used all possible diligence for performance on his proportionable to the benefits expected Which must let them see their own obligation to yield all things short of sin rather than fail of these Solemnities because the benefits here expected are sufficient to countervail such concessions if they would hope for any equity in this case Not now to mention the presumption of sealing Covenants to themselves when they cannot procure the seals from them who are authorized by God to seal them which is not only a Nullity to God considered as a Covenanter but a provocation highly punishable by him as a Governour and which themselves would think so if they were in his Case So far are Persons who are thus far guilty from a claim to equity even by those general rules of equity by which these illiterate Persons are guided in their worldly dealings But if these illiterate Persons should be yet too solicitous for Authorities though that be a thing which their Teachers are not too forward to recommend to them where they are not evidently swayed by interest to do so yet § L 3. THE main Principles of my Discourse are such as are already granted by our Adversaries themselves That the Gospel is transacted in way of a Covenant and that the Sacraments are the seals of that Covenant though as to the substance of the things they may have been granted by several antienter than the separation of our Brethren yet none were then so zealous for these Notions nor so accurate in the properties of speech resulting from them I am sure it was not so ordinary either in the primitive Church or in the Western Churches for many Centuries before the Reformation to write so many professed Volumns on this Subject of the Covenants or to call the Sacraments seals in ordinary discourse concerning them as it is now among the generality of our separating Brethren of whatsoever denominations I think there are very few if any among them who are at all for Sacraments but they have entertained these Notions concerning them And these are the fundamental Principles of the precedent discourse though I have also provided less doubtful Principles for those who might doubt of them What is asserted further is only in consequence to these Principles and therefore must be admitted by them who grant the Principles from whence these consequences are deduced And yet even of these consequences themselves some of the chief and of greatest importance to my design are also generally granted by those parties whom ignorant Persons have reason to regard as equal and competent guides in affairs of this nature that is by such of them as are not led by professed Principles of Enthusiasm but by sober and prudent considerations of the nature of a Church and the necessity and nature of that Government which themselves find necessary by their own experience when they come to practise it that is indeed when they find themselves obliged by their own interests to consider it soberly and impartially And it is only in such a case as that is that it can be prudent for ignorant Persons to trust them when they are considering positively what is true rather than when they are thinking only how they may avoid an Adversary § LI FROM these Notions of Gods proceeding with us in way of a Covenant and the Sacraments being the seals of that Covenant I infer the necessity of a lawful Mission for a valid administration of the Sacraments This is also admitted by the generality of those parties now mentioned Even they who say that gifted Brethren may preach yet do not so ordinarily allow that such Persons may administer the Sacraments till their gifts be at least solemnly approved by such as have at least that power of solemnly approving them And they who derive their Authority from the people yet either do so upon that general popular mistake whereby they take the power of preaching the word for more essential to the Ministry and for an exercise of the supreme Authority wherewith they are invested which supreme act of Authority infeâ—s and includes the inferior exercises and branches of it than that of administring the Sacraments Or if they derive even their Jurisdiction from their power in admitting to or excluding from the Sacraments yet the reason is because they then consider them as Ceremonies of admitting to or excluding from their Society rather than as seals of the Covenant And then the reason why they derive the power of administring them from the Multitude is from that general power which every individual of the multitude has to chuse his own company which he may give away if he pleases Or if yet further they consider them even as seals yet they rather consider them as seals on their own part what conditions they are pleased to submit to and the Minister as the common Procurator Authorized by every particular Person to promise and seal the Covenant in his name than as seals on Gods part conveying a legal right to promises on the performance of conditions And it is undoubtedly the right of every particular Person to enter into what Covenants he pleases and to delegate whom he pleases to act for him in sealing them But iâ— they had considered them as seals on Gods part there could have been no pretence of a power in the people to assign delegates for him on any Principles that I know of that are mainteined among them Very few of them if any do so much as pretend that the Multitude has a right to administer the Sacraments in their own persons Nor can they have colour on the Principles here proposed to lay claim to any such right The Spiritual benefits here conferred as pardon of sins the gift of the Holy Spirit and supernatural rewards on the performance of duty are plainly not originally at their disposal Nor can they pretend to any general conveyance of this power from any who had any right to dispose of them neither from God himself nor from the Apostles nor any of their Successors empowered by them § LII NOR indeed is it so regular according to the nature of Covenants in general that one party should be allowed the liberty of allotting delegates for the other Though the same Persons may be chosen to mediate and transact the Covenant between both parties yet it is proper that this common power be conferred on them by the distinct suffrages of the parties themselves who must first act for themselves before any third Person can be empowered to act for them This is certainly just and equal where Covenants are transacted on equal terms between equal parties But where they are mediated between Superiors and
as Persons Authorized to transact with him in the name of their respective Societies and then to oblige them by virtue of their Covenant to employ their Authority for that design for which it was intended by him when he gave it them So that in this regard they are to be considered as concerned on the part of Mankind on which account I have already shewn the necessity of investing them with such an Authority But considering God as a Governour they will be related to him under that Notion as Subordinate Governours to their principal Head and Original of Authority And so they will be concerned not on Mans part of the Covenant but on Gods so that He will be more immediately concerned in the Duty and respect that is paid to them and consequently the principal Duty Covenanted for on our part being a submission to the Divine Authority and a performance of all his Commands Temporary and Prudential as well as of such as are Eternally Obligatory We cannot perform our Covenant with God without being Dutiful to them because they are invested with his Authority As he is accounted a Rebel against his Prince who resists any of his inferior Officers who are Legally empowered and commissioned by him not only in things for which they have his particular express Warrant but also in such as are to be presumed to have been left to their Prudence to Determine by Virtue of their General Commission § III AND it is no inconsiderable use of this Distinction to observe that Ecclesiastical Governours being invested with a Power of Government in both these respects cannot be accountable to their Subjects as our Independent Brethren would have them Indeed this might have been the Case if they had been considered only as our Representatives and God had withal permitted us to our natural Liberty both to appoint them and to allow them what degree of trust we had pleased For then we might as well have allowed them a limitted power as some Democratical Governments in the like manner derived from the consents of their particular Members have confessedly done And then by the Fundamental Rules of Democracy all Persons being Subject to the Multitude in all such instances wherein they had not been particularly empowered and all power being derived from the Multitude it will follow that if they should presume to transgress the limits allowed them they were still Vsurpers and therefore still Subject and accountable for such misdemeanors to those who had empowered them But if we consider the Multitude as prevented even in this their natural Right of choosing and empowering their Representatives as it is most certain that God may prevent them by virtue of his Authority over them Antecedent to any compacts whatsoever and it is credible that he would if he should think a Government independent on the Subjects most likely to promote the designs of such a Government as this is And much more if we consider them as concerned on Gods part of the Covenant So it will plainly appear that they must derive their Authority wholly from God and therefore can have no other bounds than he is pleased to prescribe them and even in Case of their transgressing these they can be accountable for such Transgressions only to God not to the Multitude from whom as no Authority was in this Case derived so none could be reserved from them which might make the Multitude their competent Superiors So that the nature of this manner of conveyance of Government must make the Governours to whom it is conveyed Absolute and unaccountable at least to any humane Judgment At least if the Multitude would challenge any Jurisdiction this way they ought to derive their claim from the same Original by as clear and express donation from God himself as their Governours do which is not that I know of as much as pretended to And it is a very strong Presumption against them that Ecclesiastical Government was never derived from them that indeed they never were in a condition of doing it The Primitive Converts were never united into a Body Antecedently to their admission into Christianity but were admitted by single persons and successively And such could not even by the Rules of Democracy be supposed to have a power of disposing of the Original inherent Rights of the Multitude Besides it is plain that the first propagators of Christianity Christ himself and the Apostles had a Right of forming a Society independent on the consent of its particular Nembers and their admission of all the first Believers into their Society by Baptism does plainly shew that they acted and owned themselves to act by a power that could not have been derived from them But for proving this I may elsewhere have a more convenient occasion § IV TO return therefore to my Subject from which I have hitherto digressed That God as a Governour is concerned to erect the Church into a Body politick and to appoint Subordinate Governours under himself in Order to the seeing his Will performed This will be easy to understand if it be considered 1. That no Society whatsoever is governable only by general and immutable Laws without particular prudential accommodations to present circumstances both of which must be derived from the same Authority and therefore that there must be also in the Church if it be governed by God as well particular Divine Commands for things which are for the good of it in particular Circumstances as for those which are to immutably and eternally § V THAT 2. God does not appear to declare his Will in these particular Circumstances by particular Extraordinary Revelations And therefore as in other Cases wherein a Prince cannot be consulted with in things belonging to his Authority that is to be presumed to be the Princes pleasure which is proposed as such by his Ordinary Officers and Disobedience to such Injunctions of Ordinary Officers is punished as if it had been committed against the Prince himself so God must also be supposed to have provided for such Cases by that general Power which he must therefore give to Ecclesiastical Officers whom we are therefore accordingly to revere as we would approve our Selves obedient to God himself § VI THAT 3. Besides that general Laws cannot reach all particular Circumstances because indeed what is Good in Circumstances is Evil if considered in general and therefore no way fit to be generally imposed I say besides this even in particulars that are reducible to them they are not sufficient for governing any Society without Officers intrusted with a Power of Authentically expounding them so that Subjects may be obliged to stand to their Decisions and of compelling Subjects to submission in their practice For if Subjects be willing to perform their Duty and able to discern it in all particular Cases there would be no need of Authority But if Authority be supposed necessary and that some Subjects will in all likelyhood prove disingenuous as well as mistaken the