giveth Let them not deceive men by making a Verbal strife of it If they will call either electing or investing a Giving of the Power I will not contend against their liberty of speaking as unfitly as they list if they will but well explain it But the thing is plain and sure that 1. The election doth but determine of the Receiver 2. and that the Investing act is but a ministerial publick delivery of a Right which resulteth immediately from the Charter or Law of Christ If a Bishop say I ordain you to the office of a Presbyter the Scripture must tell us what that is If the Bishop say Take the office of a Presbyter but preach not or only preach and administer the Sacraments or do both but you shall have none of the Church Keyes or power of discipline it is null as to the restraint There is no contract freer than that between a husband and wife as to the choice of persons And yet when a woman chooseth a man for her husband it is not she that properly giveth him the Ruling power she did but choose the receiver God by his Law is the Giver If she bargain with him that he shall not be her Governour it is null because against Gods Law And so it is in the present case If the power of Ordination and Church Government can be proved to be setled by Christ on the Presbyters either conjunct with the Bishop or alone he that ordaineth a Presbyter by virtue of Christs institution cannot deprive him of that power by his own will and act by saying You shall have no such power For God is the describer and the giver § 14. Yea some would perswade men that the very office of Presbyters is of humane institution As some Papists in the Council of Trent would have had it pass that Christ having made the Pope the Pope maketh the office of Bishops and they hold their power from him so some Prelates would have it believed that Christ only instituted the Order of Bishops and that Bishops made the Order of Subject Presbyters and that after Scripture-times there being none till then existent but the word Presbyter in Scripture everywhere signifying only a Bishop Which those that are against the distinct order of Bishops thankfully accept and say that indeed Subject Presbyters having no ordaining power are a humane invention since Scripture-times and that God instituted no such order But the difference is that these say man had no authority to do it and bid the other prove by what authority it was done and where the Bishops had such power given them to make a new species order or office of sacred Ministers But the other say that it was well done But proof is all § 15. And here come in many other Church-distracting contentions As 1. Whether any Bishops Ordination be valid that holdeth not his Power from the Pope 2. Whether he be a true Bishop that is not Canonically ordained by three Bishops 3. Whether he be a true Bishop that is not chosen or consented to by the people and Presbyters of his Church 4. Or if he have but the minor part the rest not being allowed or called to choose 5. Or if the major part be against him 6. Or if three neighbour Bishops be for him and ordain him Bishop and many more be against it or forbid it 7. Whether he be a true Presbyter that is not ordained by a Bishop of distinct and superior Order And whether an uninterrupted succession of such ordination is necessary 8. Whether he be a true Bishop that is ordained only by Presbyters 9. Whether he may be a true Bishop or Presbyter that hath no Ordination 10. Or he that hath no Election but the Kings or the Patrons nor other proved Consent of the people 11. Whether he be a true Bishop or Presbyter that the King alloweth not or forbiddeth 12. Whether the Ordination of hereticks be null 13. Whether the Ordinations of prohibited degraded or excommunicate Bishops be null Abundance of such controversies ignorance and faction have torn the Churches with § 16. I. As to the first I need not answer it to any but Papists and as to them I and others have said enough that is unanswered § 17. II. As to the second where the Churches agree to take none for a Bishop that is not ordained by three four or more that person cannot be the Bishop of that particular Church which by such agreement doth refuse him Not for want of any thing necessary to a valid ordination but for want of the Consent of the people or subjects that are to receive him For he cannot be their Pastor against their will But the Ordination of One may make a man a Minister in the Church-universal unfixed and to a particular Church if the receivers of him do consent § 18. III. As to the third Election oft signifieth the first determining nomination distinct from after consent This is not necessary to the office or power But Consent is necessary at least to the exercise and therefore to the office which is for that exercise If people were as much under Princes for choosing Guides for their souls as a daughter in her fathers house is under her father for the choice of a husband which yet I never saw proved to be so yet as he can be no husband to her without her consent though she culpably deny consent so is it here he can be no Pastor to them till they consent § 19. IV. and V. In all Societies where consent is necessary the consent must be either of All or of the Most or else they will divide § 20. VI. To the sixth The question of the Validity of the Ordination dependeth not on it but on the peoples acceptance and consent If ten Bishops ordain one man Bishop of a Church and three ordain another to the same Church and one a third as sometimes there have been divers ordained Popes that only is the true Bishop whom the Church which he is to be over consenteth to Other decisions will not serve § 21. VII I will answer this largelier by it self in the third part Here I only say 1. so far as any Ordination is necessary the Ordination of a Bishop is necessary But the question 〈◊〉 what a Bishop is If he be defined by the Power of ordaining alone some think there is no such because by the old Canons the Presbyters were to joyn in Ordination Others think that when none else are there any one Presbyter may ordain alone If he be defined by the Power of Ordaining simply or of having a Negative vote in ordaining the doubt is whether every Presbyter have not Power to ordain as in nature the Propagation of its own species is common to all living things Either Ordination is a Governing act of superiority or a propagation of the species If the later Presbyters may do it If the former then Bishops cannot ordain Bishops as such nor
lay more stress or an outward act of man and point of order than he doth § 26. 3. And as to the Nature and Use of the thing Order is for the sake of the thing ordered and the persons for whose good it is And therefore not to be set against them § 27. 4. And Christ himself hath oft taught us this way of judging When he bids us Go learn what this meaneth I will have mercy and not sacrifice And when he oft reproveth Jews and Samaritans for striving about circumstances setting them against spiritual worshipping of God And when he saith The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath And Paul when he saith All things are yours whether Paul or Apollos and Let all be done to Edification All which tell us that the End is a certain Canon to the means and to be preferred and that Morals must be preferred before Rituals and Rituals never set against them And methinks they should be of this mind that deny the Scripture to have unchangeably fixed all Rituals and yet confess that Morals are fixedly determined § 28. 5. And even Popes have been taken for Popes upon Election before Consecration And Arch-bishops with us have no superiours to Consecrate them but such Inferiours as promise them obedience at their own Consecration § 29. X. To the tenth question There be some called Erastians who hold the King to be so mixta persona like Melchizedeck as that he is also the chief Priest and hath the chief power of Ordination and that he might administer the Sacraments if he would and that his Appointment is an Ordination which the people are bound by reception of the person to consent to There are others that think that though the investing act must be performed by a Bishop yet he is bound by the Kings choice and command to do it as a Minister of God and the King But as I never saw either of these well proved so very few comparatively receive them and therefore they will never unite the Churches And Christs giving the power of the Keys himself to the Apostles and their Successours in the Ministry seemeth to me to contradict them Sure I am that Christs Church hath not thus been founded or edified And yet Magistrates have a great and honourable part even in the Government of the Church I speak not for all those Popish Councils and Canons which nullifie all Ordinations of Bishops either chosen or presented by Civil Rulers or Great men that are Secular nor of those that pronounce even a Pope an Usurper that is so introduced But of the Councils and practice of the sounder ages that were still against this 2. However if Clergy and people were proved to be bound to Consent to whomsoever the Prince shall choose yet till they do consent he is no Bishop to them You may could that be proved prove them culpable for not consenting but not prove him their Bishop as the Scripture and all Church custome and Canons and Reason shew § 30. XI To the eleventh case I answer That the Priests or people sin who disobey a lawful command of the King and not otherwise But sin or not sin it nullifieth not the Ordination or Priesthood meerly that it is against the will of the Prince All the Bishops and Priests in the world or most were made against the will of Princes for three hundred years And Christ gave the Keyes to other hands § 31. XII and XIII To the twelfth and thirteenth cases I answer together If a heretick whose denyal of an essential of Christianity is notorious and maketh him equal to an Apostate ordain his Act is null as without all authority And the mans Priesthood or Episcopacy is null if he have not a sufficient cause and proof of it besides or without this The same I say of one excommunicate for such a cause But if the Heresie be only a schism or some lower errour consistent with Christianity and Priesthood or the excommunication only on such a cause then the ordination in sensu passivo is not null meerly on that account that it was done by such a heretick or excommunicate man As is commonly agreed on But yet if this Bishop or Presbyter be ordained by a heretick or excommunicate man of a lower order to this or that particular Church caeteris paribus the people may see reason to refuse him and consent to another that hath a better ordination unless in a Church so corrupted that the Ordainers and Excommunicators authority is not to be regarded and help up which hath too oft faln out But regularly none ought to ordain a man to any Church before the election or consent of the flock though it may serve ad esse officii if the consent come after But if three Bishops ordain one man to be Bishop of such a Church and three others ordain another to the same that is the true Bishop quoad esse which the Church to which he is ordained doth accept by their consent before or after Yea though it were the worser party of Bishops that ordained that man § 32. As to the point of successive-right-ordination uninterrupted from the Apostles I hope afterward in due place to prove that to the Church universal such there hath been de facto in all the necessary parts But that to any particular Church or any individual persons ministry such uninterrupted course of ordination in being notice or proof is utterly unnecessary and that the Papacy hath no such to shew § 33. To conclude To the Being of the true Relation of a Bishop or Presbyter is necessary only 1. The Subject which is a Qualified Christian man sufficiently notified and offered 2. The Fundamentum Relationis Christs Law or Charter giving him his power and obliging him to his work 3. The mutual consent of Pastor and flock in the Relation to a particular Church is partly Dispositio subjecti and partly as it is Gods means a modus fundandi or conditio tituli 4. The Terminus of one ordained to the gathering of Churches sine titulo or not to any particular Church is objectively first men unconverted to be called and next men converted to be edified and as Effects the work to be done and the good to be done by it And in those ordained to particular Churches it is the work and the effect on them 5. The Correlate is 1. Christ to whom we are related as his Ministers as the efficient of our office 2. The people to whom we are related as the end and that 1. we are Ministers to the world to be converted 2. To the Universal Church to be edified 3. and mostly to particular Churches to be guided 6. The Relatum then is such a person Authorized and obliged to Teach Worship and Rule under Christ the Prophet Priest and King of the Church the foresaid flocks or Christians to the foresaid ends § 34. II. So much for what is necessary to the Being of the sacred
is the great divider and destroyer As ever therefore we pity the souls of sinners and would not be guilty of their damnation we should keep the Unity of the spirit in the bond of peace § 6. VI. Our Love to the Church and Sacred Ministry doth oblige us Our Discords unsay too powerfully what Christs Ministers say when they set forth the power of grace and the excellency of Christianity All the opposition of the arguments and reproaches of Quakers or malignant prophane enemies is of far less force against the Gospel than the discords of professed Christians The labours of many worthy Ministers have been hindered and their hearts even broken with such sinful and scandalous divisions when the enemies hit us in the teeth with these we are ashamed and cannot deny the fact though we can deny their false conclusions How much of the designs of Satan and his agents have lain in dividing the servants of Christ Some of the moderate and peaceable Emperours in the more flourishing state of the Church and Empire by the discords and mutinies of factious Christians were made a-weary of their Crowns Yea some of those that the hasty hereticating Orthodox party too hastily pronounced hereticks and heretical such as Theodosuis junior Zeno Anastasuis Justinian c. were tired out with labouring in vain to keep the Christian Bishops in Peace and by Historians are recorded to be men of better qualities than the Bishops And one of them Anastasius laid down his Crown and told them he would not be the Ruler of such contentious and unruly men till the necessities of the people brought them to remorse and to intreat him to continue Emperour and promised to cease their mutinous contentions And what the divisions in the Church of Rome did to shame and thus far abase the Papacy is past all doubt When there have been in many generations sometimes two and sometimes three called Popes at once when some Kingdoms owned one and some another and when they often fought it out and as Victor the third and many another got their pretended right by Victory not by the Word but by the Sword When one Pope for forty years together lived in France at Avignion and the other at Rome When they fought it out with many Emperours and Kings When Italy was kept by them many ages in divisions and bloody wars and when the very Citizens of Rome and their Popes were put to fight it out at home in their streets And when the Popes have excommunicated the people of Rome it self where then was the Church of Rome All this Church history recordeth to their perpetual shame And have not the dissensions between Luther and Carolostadius and Zuinglius Lutherans and Calvinists to name no more been a reproach to the Reformation as I said before As we Love the Church then and as we regard the honour and success of the Ministry and would not have Christs house and Kingdom fall or be shaken or disgraced by our sinful discords Let us keep this spiritual Unity and peace § 7. VII And indeed Experience is not the least of our obligations A danger never tryed is seldom so cautelously avoided as those into which we have formerly fallen and out of which we have narrowly escaped They that have read Church-History what the factions and heresies of the Bishops and people have done from the dayes even of the Apostles to this day Yea they that have but seen and felt what Religious discords have done in this generation even at home in England Scotland and Ireland and yet do not hate such discord as death and love peace and spiritual unity as life and health and safety they are hardened past all excuse CHAP. VIII What sort and measure of Vnity may not or may be groundedly hoped for on earth § 1. THe Prognosticks in diseases are needful to direct Physicians in their attempts He that either pretendeth to Cure incurable diseases and thereby doth but torment the Patient and hasten death or else will hastily prevent the Crisis or will open inflammations before the time may be called a Physician or Surgeon but will prove a hurtful or pernicious enemy Some diseases will admit of no better than palliating and delay Some that are curable are made mortal by temerarious haste Who will break the Egg to get the Chicken before it is ripened by nature for exclusion Yet hath the Church had too many such Midwives that will hasten abortion and untimely birth and cannot stay till natures time such mischievous Surgeons as are presently lancing unripe apostemes It is of mischievous consequence to expect such Concord and accordingly set upon the hastening of it which certainly will never be And it is of great and necessary Use to know how much and what Vnity may be expected in the Church militant and what not § 2. I. Negatively I. It is certain that Christians will never be all of one stature or degree of grace The Apostle hath fully opened this 1 Cor. 12. and here Eph. 4. and Rom. 14. 15. and elsewhere Some will be of more blameless lives and some more offensive Some will be more fruitful and useful in the Church than others some will have greater gifts than others for that end some will be more patient and meek and others more passionate and hot some will be more considerate and prudent and some more rash and of indecent carriage some will be more humble and condescending and abhorr pride much more than others will do some will be more zealous and some more frigid or luke-warm some will be much more heavenly and make less of earthly things than others some will be more self-denying and patient under sufferings and some will too much seek their own transitory things and with greater impatience bear both crosses from God and injuries from man some will be more cheerful and rejoyce in God and the hope of Glory and others will be more sad and timerous and heavy Some will have a strong faith and some a weak Some will have assured sealed hopes and others will be doubting of their salvation But in nothing will there be more certain and notable difference than in mens knowledge and conceptions of spiritual things Undoubtedly there is scarce a greater difference of Visages than there is of Intellectual apprehensions Nay perhaps the likeness of all mens faces is greater than of their understandings Some will still know little and none very much but others comparatively much more Some that know much in one kind will be ignorant in others And as all men are not of the same Trade nor all Scholars prosecute the same studies but some excell in one thing and some in another and some in nothing so in religion such proportions and differences of understanding there will be § 3. No observing man that converseth with mankind one would think could be ignorant of this And yet the talk and actions of too many Church-Leeches in most parts and
Baptism the term of Christian Catholick unity and concord as necessary ad esse and the Creed as needful and apt ad bene esse ordinarily § 22. There is a controversie raised as aforesaid by Donatists and other Sectaries so now by the Papists whether the person baptized must not also own 1. the Ministry in general 2. the particular Minister that baptizeth him 3. and the particular Church into which he is received 4. and subject himself by profession to such pastoral power To all which I shall distinctly answer § 23. I. To the first 1. what is connoted is not alwayes a necessary part of the contract A man cannot be baptized but he must know that some one hath power to baptize him 2. It is more needful of the two that the Apostolical office and power be known and believed than the successive ordinary Ministry Because the belief of the truth of the Gospel more dependeth on their testimony as commissioned and qualified with those extraordinary gifts of the spirit which are its seal and proof 3. It is of great use to our faith and obedience to understand that Christ hath settled an authorized Ministry to preserve and preach his Word and administer his Sacraments and guide his Churches to the end of the world and he that knoweth not this wanteth an integral part of Christianity and a great and needful help to his edification and salvation 4. Yet none of these are absolutely necessary to the essence of Christianity If any lived where the ministerial office were not known or should by misleading so far err as to think that any judicious Christian or any Christian Magistrate or master of a family might preach and administer the Sacraments if yet this man believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost as his Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier and be accordingly devoted to him in baptism this man shall be saved notwithstanding his ignorance or errour about the Ministry yea though he knew not of the office of the Apostles but took them for lay men For the promise is that whoever believeth in Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life Joh. 3. 16 18. by what means soever he was converted to the faith It is not only He that is converted by a Priest shall not perish Nor is it ever said He that believeth in the Apostles or Priests shall not perish but he that believeth in Christ which essentially includeth the belief in the Father and the Holy Ghost And therefore Paul calleth them carnal as guilty of Schism that said I am of Paul and I of Cephas because they were not baptized into the name of Paul or Cephas but of Christ And he thanketh God that he had baptized few of them lest they should say that he had baptized them into his own name And yet are the Apostles foundations or bases and pillars in the Church because Christ used them as the first great keepers of his word and seals and the means of converting unbelievers and it 's hard and rare to believe in Christ without knowing and believing that they were his commissioned Ministers § 24. II. But though it be a duty to choose a true Minister to be baptized by yet it is not at all necessary to the validity of baptism to know that the baptizer is such Indeed not one of many can be sure as not having seen his ordination nor knowing of his necessary qualifications Many things may deceive them and all baptism by Lay-men is not null as the Fathers held and the Papists now hold and confess § 25. III. And as to reception into a particular Church I have proved before that it is no work of baptism as such but a consequent act in order of nature alwayes and oft of time The Eunuch Act. 8. was baptized into no Church but the Universal There be some few rigid mistaken brethren called Independents in New England that think indeed that all baptized persons must be baptized into a particular Church but others even of that party are wiser herein It is very fit that every one that can be a member of some particular Church But some cannot as Travellers Merchants Ambassadors c. who reside among Infidels only and those that live in Countreys where the Pastors by tyranny refuse to admit any to their communion who will not say or do some unlawful thing But yet Baptism as such is no such thing nor hath such an effect Much less is it a profession that such a particular Church is sound § 26. IV. And as to subjection to the Clergie It is true that Baptism essentially subjecteth us to Christ and this includeth an obligation to obey him in all things which we know to be his Law And it is true that just obedience to the Guides of the Church is his command But it followeth not that every man knoweth this nor that every disobedience unchurcheth us It is his command that we pray continually and in all things give thanks and that we speak not an idle word and use not vain jeasting c. But it nullifieth not Christianity that we culpably offend in one of these Nor doth our baptism contain our promise that we will never sin nor that we will obey a command which we understand not but that we will be Christs subjects and obey him sincerely so as that when we fail by weakness we will renew our repentance Christ also commandeth every child subject wife servant to obey their parents Princes and Magistrates Husband and Master And he that is baptized bindeth himself also to obey these Laws sincerely if he know them But it followeth not that it is essential to Baptism to oblige us to subjection to parents husbands masters but only to Christ who commandeth us to obey them Even as subjects take not an Oath of Allegiance to every Justice Constable or Messenger but only to the King who yet commandeth us to obey his Judges Justices Constables c. § 27. To pretend that Baptism as such doth subject men to the Bishop of Rome or to the Bishop of Alexandria Antioch Paris London or to the Pastor of a single Church is a perverting the sence of it and to be answered as the Apostle did others Were ye baptized into the Name of Paul CHAP. IV. II. What are the terms necessary for the continuance of Church-Communion and what are the lawful Causes of abscission or Excommunication § 1. IT is granted that as there is somewhat more necessary to the continuance of our pardon justification and right to glory than was to our first reception so also to our continuance as members of the Catholick Church That is the bare profession of faith and consent and subjection or Covenanting with Christ for future sincere obedience is enough to our first reception by baptism But some performance of this Covenant is necessary to our continuance The reasons are 1. Because the Covenant or promise is necessary not meerly for it self but for the
Arch-bishops ordain Arch-bishops nor Patriarchs ordain Patriaâ—rhs nor any one ordain a Pope And yet of old Deacons and Presbyters were made Popes that were not before so much as Bishops Formosus being the first Bishop of Rome that had been a Bishop before and therefore condemned and executed dead the Canons forbidding any to remove from one seat to another saith Arch-bishop Vsher Jerome ad Evagr assureth us that at Alexandria from the dayes of St. Mark till Demetrius the Presbyters made their Bishop ergo they may make Presbyters They that can do the greater can do the less And Dr. Hammond concluding that there is no proof that in Scripture-times there were any subject Presbyters distinct from Bishops maketh it hard to be proved that there should be any such at all and whether the making of a rank of Presbyters that have no power of Ordination be not a changing of Scripture order and a sin Yet even subject Presbyters made since Scripture-time concurred in ordinations and do partly to this day 2. If a Bishop be described by his actual superiority over Presbyters then saith the foresaid Dr. Hammond there was none in Scripture-times 3. If a Bishop be described by being over a Church compounded of divers Parish Churches or Congregations that have Altars there can none such be proved to be in the world for about two hundred years after Christ besides Apostles and Itinerants whose Province was indefinite and not a particular Church not of long after saving at Rome and Alexandria There was none such when Ignatius's Epistles were written 4. But if the chief or only Pastor of a single Church that hath unum altare yea of a City Church be to be called a Bishop then multitudes now called meer Presbyters have been such Bishops and have ordained And as to a Negative Vote in ordaining that if it were proved it self proveth no distinct order or office but for order-sake a prerogative in the same office The question is yet undecided even among Schoolmen and Bishops whether a Bishop and Presbyter differ only Gradâ— as the foreman from the rest of the Jury or a Justice of Quorum or a chief Judge or Justice from the rest or also Ordine or Specie as a Justice and a Constable Saith Arch-bishop Vsher with Bishop Reignolds and many other Bishops Ad ordinem pertinet ordinare and they are ejusdem ordinis which others deny § 22. But not to anticipate my fuller answer to this case I briefly answer that Gods Law or Charter giving the Ministerial power to the duly qualified receiver no Ordination doth more than to determine with the peoples consent who is the qualified receiver and for the sake of Order and the Churches notice to declare his right and solemnly invest him And God hath not appropriated this declaring and investing power so to their Prelates distinct from Presbyters that I ever found as that the Church should receive none but of their ordination What men decree is one thing and what God ordaineth is another Where an order is setled by men according to Gods allowance and general rules there the people should caeteris paribus receive him that is most regularly commended to them But if they receive one less regularly sent them if he want nothing necessary to the Being of the office he is their Pastor who is so received by them When Justices of the Peace did marry the people in England the Marriage was valid before God as truly as when the Clergy did it The same is a sufficient designation of the Recipient person in some times places and circumstances which is not at others And when the Person is but Determined of and consented to Gods word authorizeth him § 23. VIII The answer to the seventh question serveth to the eighth They were true Bishops whom the Presbyters made at Alexandria and those in the North of England who as Beda saith were made by Scots Presbyters § 24. IX He may be a true Bishop or Presbyter that in cases of necessity hath no Ordination at all much more he that is ordained but by Presbyters The proof lyeth in these things set together 1. As is said Gods Law or charter giveth the right or power to the duly qualified determined and chosen person But in cases of necessity a qualified person may be determined of and chosen without any Ordination Therefore he may have the right or authority without 2. Such necessity there may be in several cases As 1. If by good books men be Converted among Infidels where no Bishop or Ordained Minister can be had They must not therefore forbear Church-assemblies and publick worshipping God and baptizing 2. In case that many Christians be banished or cast upon forraign lands where no Minister is to be had 3. In case that persecutors banish or destroy all ordained men and will suffer no other to come among them or them to fetch ordination 4. In case that all the Bishops or Ordainers turn either hereticks or tyrants and will ordain none but on some sinful terms 5. In case that men living under Bishops do forge Orders and pretend that they are ordained when they are not and the people know it not Their acts now are of full authority or validity to the innocent people though God will condemn the pretender for his sin This case I have oft known my self and in my youth lived under such as was after discovered And the opponents themselves here confess that Presumption may serve turn to the people when they cannot detect it And indeed few people in England know any otherwise than by presumption that their Bishops or Pastors are ordained And if it were true that Presbyters Ordination were null yet when the ordained after great study believeth it valid and the people cannot know the contrary here is a Presumed title both to the ordained and the people that is valid administrations and receptions without ordination § 25. 2. And indeed the like cases prove it by parity of reason Ordination to the Ministry is but like Coronation to a King or publick marriage to Consenters or like listing and the sacramentum militare to a Souldier or like publick authorizing to a Physicion a School master c. and not all so much as baptizing to make a Christian But an hereditary or Elected King is a King before his Coronation and marriage privately contracted and publickly professed is valid before God before the solemnization by a Minister and in case of necessity without it And a Souldier may be truly such by contract without Colours or Oaths And a man may be a Lawful Physicion or School-master in case of necessity without a License or publick authorizing Yea one may be a Christian before God yea and before men that openly professeth and Voweth the Baptismal Covenant though in case of necessity when either a Minister or Water cannot he had the washing be wanting And we are not to feign God to make a difference here without proof or to
cannot take from them what they never had nor are capable of But we in London never had local Communion with them of Vienna Paris Rome c. nor ever saw them All therefore that they can do is to account those Hereticks or wicked or Apostates whom before they accounted good Christians and to declare that they own them not as fellow Christians and would not communicate with them did they live among them and to warn others that are in danger of them to avoid them and this not as an act of Government over them but of common Christian duty for the honour of our common religion and in charity to others The just renouncing of mental or local Communion by equals or neighbours much differs from a Governing commanding excommunication forbiding other Churches as their subjects to communicate with such on certain penalties which is the usurpation of Popes Patriarchs and some others who claim such governing power without proof CHAP. VIII VI. What is necessary to the Civil Peace and concord of Christians and what is the part of the Christian Magistrate about Religion as to his promoting or tolerating mens doctrines or practices therein § 1. THe contentions of the world here call us to resolve these several doubts 1. Who it is that should have the power of the sword or Magistracy 2. How it is to be used towards all men as men in society 3. How it is to be used for the service of Christ and good of the Church in encouraging some and tolerating others and keeping peace among them all § 2. It is here supposed that the subject is understood and that we are agreed what the Magistrates power is at least de re though not de definitione vel de nomine that is it is the power of Governing by the sword that is of making Laws and judging according to them and executing them by outward force on mens bodies or estates And so it is contradistinguished from the power called Ministerial Pastoral Priestly or Ecclesiastical which is the gathering and guiding of Christian Churches by Gods word preached expounded and applyed The nature of each and their differences I have formerly opened in a small treatise written purposely on that subject to end the Erastian controversie And Bishop Bilson fuily openeth them in his excellent book of Christian Obedience c. The Magistrate hath power forcibly to seize on offenders estates and bodies to imprison mutilate scourge strike and kill them that deserve it and to make Laws and judge men unto such punishments The Ministers of Christ or Pastors of the Churches have no such power but only to declare Gods Laws to the people and convert and baptize the wicked unbelievers and teach them the word and will of Christ and guide them in publick worship and Communion and judge who is capable thereof and to require the people in the name of Christ to love and receive the worthy and to avoid the unworthy and to resolve the peoples particular doubts and by personal application to pronounce and declare Gods acceptance of penitent believers and his promise to save them and his decree to condemn the ungodly unbelievers impenitent and Hypocrites § 3. This difference is commonly acknowledged by the generality of sober Christians But one schismatical Writer against schism will needs call this Pastoral power Coactive coercive or forcing also though he confess that it is not a power to touch mens Bodies or estates that so by casting out all differencing names he may hide the acknowledged difference of the power and execution And his reason for this errour de nomine is because suspension and excommunication are executed on the involuntary and compel those that believe the power and fear them to obey Where 1. The word compel containeth the confusion compelling the mind by meer argument being not the compelling by corporal force which we are speaking of 2. And every man that chideth reproveth or threatneth a sinner usually doth it to the involuntary And if he believe him and yield he will obey And if you argue from his future danger or suffering it is the fear of it that moveth him But the fear of Gods declared threatnings is not the same as the fear of mans stripes imprisonments unless c. 3. And excommunication worketh on no mans body further than it worketh on his conscience to make him a voluntary agent If you denounce damnation against him it moveth him no further than he believeth you as applying to him the word of God If you forbid him to be present or take the sacrament and he refuse to obey you may not forcibly thrust him out without the Magistrates consent but only suspend your own act of delivery or depart If you command the people to avoid him they will no further obey you than they perceive Gods authority in your words and are convinc't in Conscience of their duty And every sermon may thus compel men And all that judge the sentence unjust and powerless will despise it § 4. 1. There are four or five opinions about the possessors of this forcing power by the sword or violence The first of them that say It belongeth to all Magistrates Christian and unchristian The second of them that say It belongeth only to Christian Magistrates The third of them that say It belongeth to Orthodox Magistrates or Catholick only and not to Hereticks The fourth of those that say that the Judicial part in cases of Religion belongeth to the Pope Prelats or Presbyters and the executive only to the Magistrate The fifth of those that say that both judicial and executive belong to the Pope Prelats and Priests I may add a sixth of them that say it is radically in the people § 5. 1. As to the first it is undoubtedly true if you distinguish between the Office Power and the aptitude of the person to perform it The Office of a Supreme Ruler is the same in all but all are not equally capable of performing it That is It is the same as described by Gods command of their performance As he commandeth infidels to believe and communicate with the Church but not to communicate before they believe so he commandeth Infidel Princes to believe and to govern the Christian affairs but to govern them as they are capable The common Laws of nature justice and peace among Christian subjects an Infidel Prince may and must see executed The Laws of Christ revealed supernaturally he ought to understand believe and execute But till he understand and believe them he cannot execute them And therefore wants the disposition and ability to do what he had command and authority to do but to do it only in the due manner to which his sin disableth him and so his Power is in him incomplete § 6. I confess it is a very hard question How an Atheist can be said to have any Governing right from that God whom he denyeth any more than a Constable from the King from whom by
as to Government And that none are of the visible Church that are not the Popes Subjects and that they that refuse such Subjection are Schismaticks or Hereticks or Infidels And that all that own Christ should be compelled by Sword or torment to own the Pope as his Vicar General Sect. III. Campanella de Regno Dei openeth the Mystery of the Fifth Monarchy and alledgeth the texts that are brought for it as intending Christs Reign on Earth by the Pope as his Viceroy And indeed it is an Universal Kingdom or Monarchy which they plead and strive for under the name of the Universal Church But in this they greatly differ whether the Pope have the universal Power of both Swords or but of one that is both Civil and Ecclesiastical and be really the King of all the World And herein they are of three Opinions as to the Subject of this Power and of three Opinions as to the degree Sect. IV. As to the Possessor of this Authority 1. One party say that the summa Potestas is in thâ—â— Pope 2. Another saith it is in the Pope presiding in a General Council or in the Pope and Council agreeing 3. And another party hold that it is in a General Council alone yet so as that the Pope is the Head of the Universal Church as the chief Prelate and Ordidinary Governour though subject to the Legislative and Judicial Power of the Council Sect. V. And as to the Degree of Power 1. Some hold that the Pope is the Monarch of all the Earth having the chief Power of both Swords and that the World is his Kingdom as Gods Vicegerent 2. Others hold that he hath directly only the Ecclesiastical Power but indirectly and in order to Spirituals he hath also the Temporal power of the Sword Or as the most hold that in his own Territories he hath both Powers as to Personal exercise but in other Kingdoms he can himself only execute the Church-power but he may command Kings to execute the power of the Sword for Religion according to his and his Bishops decrees and may force them to it by Anathema's and releasing their Subjects from the Bonds of Fidelity and giving their Kingdoms to others As some say that the King may not be personally Judge in the Courts of Justice but he may make Judges and force them to their duty and depose them if unworthy This differeth little from the former The Monarchy is nevertheless absolute though Kings be the Popes Officers or Lictors 3. But some few hold that the Pope and Bishops have no Power of the Sword at all nor of forcing Kings to use it The Controversie was hotly handled when Popes and Emperors were in Warrs The Volumes written on both sides are published by Goldastus to which William Barkley and some others in France have added more Sect. VI. Rightly therefore doth the Geograph Nubiensis call the Pope A King The Name of a Church maketh not a difference in the thing There be some that think that all Kings should be also Priests and the Popes will grant it so far as to hold that all Bishops should be Magistrates and the Chief Priest be Univerâ—al Kingâ— Cardinal Bertram in Biblioth Patr. saith God had not been wise if he had not set up such a Monarch under him over the World And in 〈◊〉 seu Bulla Sixti quarti Philippo Palatino Rhâ—ni in â—rehero Vol. 2. pag. 162. you may see their Claim in these words Universos Christianos Principes acâ—omnes Christi fideles requirere eisque mandare vice Dei cuius locum quamvis immeriti tenemus in terris To require all Christian Princes and all faithful Christians and to command them in Gods stead whose place on earth we hold though unworthy The Twelfth General Council viz. at the Laterane sub Innoc. 3. and some at Rome under Greg. 7. and many others put this Claim of theirs past doubt Sect. VII Now that the Universal Church will never unite in the Roman Papacy I prove undeniably as followeth 1. Because Christians will never unite in an Agreement to forsake the Scriptures as Gods Word and Law where they will still find that he never instituted such a Roman Monarch The Papists contrary Assertion will never convince the World when the Book it self is open before them They will there find no one man that ruled all the rest no one to whom Appeals were made no one that ever claimed such a power much less that settled any such at Rome or that ever a word was left by Christ to direct the Church to center in the Bishop of Rome Nor that ever the Apostles preached this to the Churches which they must needs have done had it been essential to the Church Catholick or half as necessary as the Papists make it Sect. VIII 2. Because in Scripture Christians will not only find nothing for it but much against it which many Volumes having largely proved Chamier Whitakers White and abundance more it would be vain here to repeat I commend to the English Reader now but Dr. Challoners small Book of the Catholick Church Sect. IX 3. Because were it but as dark and doubtful and uncertain as common Reason and Disputers experience proveth it the universal Church can never unite in a thing which so few can see any certainty in or evident proof of Sect. X. 4. Because the greatlyest reverenced General Councils are against it limiting the Popes power to his Diocese as Nice first doth and declaring him to be National and of humane Institution as being Bishop of the Imperial City and advancing Constantinople from the same Reason as doth the Council of Chalcedon Of which I have largely written against Terret Sect. XI 5. Because the Greek Church hath ever held the Papacy to be of humane Institution Proved briefly 1. Because they ever held the Popes power to stand on the same Foundation with the other Patriarchs But they ever held the other Patriarchs to be of Humane Institution which needs no proofs to men of Reading 2. Because they set up Constantinople first next him and then equal to him and then above him which they had never done had they taken the Papacy to be of Divine Institution For they never pretended any such foundation for the Bishop of Constantinoples power and they were never so desperate as to set up Mans Ordination above Gods 3. Because they took his Power to be limited by the Laws of the Empire and him to be subject to the Emperours All which is known to men that know Church-History Sect. XII 6. Because the common Reason of Mankind will still discern that a humane Monarchy of all the Earth is a dream and Impossibility and that no man is naturally capable of exercising such a power Sect. XIII 7. Because while Baronius Binius Crab Surius and other Histories of the Councils are extant and Platina Anastasius and other Histories of the Popes and while all the old Church-History is extant and all the German
we relieve not Beggars otherwise But if the Parishes through Poverty or Uncharitableness neglect them the Law of Nature bindeth us to relieve them rather than see them perish All Laws for the meer Ordering of any Duty suppose that the Duty must be done and that as tendeth to its proper end and not that on pretence of Order it be undone If the Coronation of a King be not performed regularly he is King nevertheless by Inheritance or Election and he is King before his Coronation Marriage is valid before God by mutual consent before the Matrimonial Solemnization and where this cannot be had it is no Duty If a Priest would not marry Persons unless they will make some unlawful Promise or do some unlawful thing it is lawful and may be a Duty to marry themselves declaring it publickly to avoid Scandal unless the severity of the Law of the Land do accidentally make it unlawful And in some Countries the sinful course of Priests may make this an ordinary Case And no reason can be given but that here it may be so Sect. XI Many Cases may fall out in which no Ordination by Imposition of Hands or present Solemnity may be necessary to this Office 1. In Case a Company of Christians be Cast upon a remote Island where no Ordainer can be had and yet some of them are qualified Persons It is sinful for them to forbear Gods Publick Worship therefore they must choose the fittest person to perform it viz. Preaching Prayer Praise Baptizing and the Lords Supper And that Election sufficiently designeth the person that from Christs Charter shall receive the Ministerial Power and be obliged to the Duty if he consent 2. In Case the Person be remote and the Ordainers and he cannot meet or Persecutors or Tyrants or other Accidents hinder their Meeting he may be Authorized by Letters without any other Ordination It is well known that this hath of old been practised and Bishops have sent such Letters of Ordination to those absent Persons that have fled from Ordination and so made them Bishops And it being but the designation of the recipient Person on whom Christs Law shall confer the Office that they have to do there is no reason to be given why they may not do it effectually by writing 3. In Case that Death or Persecution hath left none to Ordain that are within reach of the Person to be Ordained If Ordination by Diocesanes were ordinarily necessary yet in those Kingdoms or Countries where there is none it cannot be had as in New-England and lately in Britain in Belgia Helvetia and other Countries Some may say You ought to go for it though as far as from America hither and to seek it Beyond the Seas and in other Lands or stay till it may be had But I answer 1. In some Countries the Governors will not suffer Diocesane Ordination 2. Words are soon spoken but to sail from America hither and that for every Man that is to be Ordained is not soon done some have not health to bear it at Sea some have not money to pay for the Voyage charge 3. It is a sinful loss of a Years time in which they might do God much service 4. A Years Voyage by Sea to and fro may hazard their Lives and so frustrate all their end 5. Some Princes and States forbid their Subjects to be Ordained in Foreign Lands as we forbid Romish Ordination lest it draw a Foreign Power on them 6. It is not lawful to deny God his Publick Worship and our selves the benefit by so long delay 7. It is contrary to the temper of the Gospel which ever subjecteth Ceremony Rites and External Orders to Morals and to Mans good and the great Ends. 8. And it is a wrong to the honour of the Divine Nature for Men to feign that the Great Wise and Merciful God layeth so great a stress upon a Ceremony or Rite or outward Order as to damn Souls and deny his own Worship where it cannot be had 4. And this Ordination is not necessary in Case the Ordainers be grown so wicked or heretical as that they will ordain no good and orthodox Men but only such as are of their own sinful way 5. And in Case the Ordainers require as necessary any one unlawful thing Subscriptions Profession Vow or Practice If any say That God will never permit us to fall under such Necessities they must prove it and Experience disproveth it Sect. XII And if in all such Cases no Ordination be necessary much less is Diocesane Ordination necessary in all Cases and Places As 1. In Countries where no Diocesanes are or are near 2. In Countries where they or their Ordination is not endured by the Governors 3. In Countries where the People being in judgment against it will have no Pastor so Ordained It is not better to have none at all 4. In Countries where Wars do hinder it 5. When the Diocesanes themselves will not venture to Ordain for fear of suffering for it 6. In Countries where the Bishops are so corrupted that they refuse all that are truly fit 7. Or where they refuse all whom the People either choose or will consent to and the Bishops and People cannot agree on the same Man 8. Or wherever the Diocesanes impose unlawful Covenants Promises Professions Subscriptions Vows Oaths or Practices without which they will not Ordain On some or other of these accounts a Romanist would not be Ordained by a Greek or Protestant or Armenian c. and a Greek or Protestant would not be Ordained by a Papist supposing something to be unlawful 9. But when a Parochial Bishop may be the Ordainer in such Cases the Validity will not be denied by most Episcopal Divines 10. And it is truly as valid in such Cases when 1. Senior Presbyters 2. that are authorized by the Magistrate 3. especially that are chief Pastors in Cities and have Curates under them do Ordain though some deny to call them Bishops 11. As the Erastians think that the Christian Magistrate may design the person by the Peoples consent without any other Ordination so Musculus and some other Protestants think that a fit person designed by the Magistrate and accepted by the People need not question his Call to the Office And it 's hard to disprove them 12. If the Opinion of many Papists and Protestants hold true That a Bishop differeth not from a Presbyter in Order or Office but in Degree as the Foreman of a Jury or the President of a Synod 〈◊〉 Colledge or Council of State c. then I see no reason but the Magistrate may make a Bishop of a Presbyter as he may make a President of a Colledge or a Mayor of a Corporation For then the difference being but in the Accidents of the Office and the King being Governor of the Church as far as the Sword is to govern and specially the determiner of meer Accidents and Circumstances circa sacra why may he not
set one Presbyter in degree above the rest Did not all the strife of Emperors for the power of investing Bishops signifie this much against the Popes opposition Both sides granted that the People and Clergy were to be the Choosers of a Bishop And it was the old Canon that no Bishop should remove from Seat to Seat so that only Presbyters and no former Bishops were made Bishops of any particular City or Deacons or Subdeacons sometime at Rome By which it appeareth that the Emperors power of Investiture amounted to a Negative voice in the making of a Bishop The Kings of Israel sent Levites to teach the People and Solomon chose who should be the High-Priest And when the Romans after sold the Office Christ bids the cleansed Lepers Go and shew themselves to the High-Priest and offer c. Sect. XIII The Case of the Reformed Churches nullified by the Papists and whose Ministers Office and Authority is denied by them is as followeth I. The old Bohemians and Waldenses had different degrees of Pastors of which the Superior were called Conseniors and Seniors of one Order who presided among the Elders but took not the Government of the Flocks out of their hands nor ruled without them and were chiefly above others in judging what Elders or Ministers were to be removed from lesser places to greater whose Form of Government most like the Ancients you may see at large in the Descriptions of Lascitius and Commenius II. The Churches called Lutherane Denmark Sueden Saxony c. have for the most part some Episcopacy called Superintendency but their Bishops take not the power of the Keys from the Pastors of the several Parishes And they take not the power of Ordaining to be proper to the Bishops For the Bishops of Denmark were made such by Bugenhagius Pomeranus a Presbyter which they suppose doth null their Successive Power And the English have Diocesane Bishops and Ordination by them and as good a Succession at least of Regular Ordination as Rome hath had III. The Churches called Presbyterian in Holland France Scotland and other Countries have Ordination by a Synod of the Pastors of particular Churches of which some are the chief Pastors of Cities and have Curates or assisting Presbyters and therefore are such Bishops as the Scripture Ignatius Tertullian yea and Cyprian describe so that 1. They think that as in Generation a Man begetteth not an Ape or Dog but a Man and an Horsâ— begetteth an Horse and every thing propagateth its own species And as Physicians make Physicians and Lawyers make Lawyers c. So Pastors make Pastorâ— as far as belongeth to an Ordainer that is preparing and determining the Receiver whom God shall give the Power to and oblige to the duty of that Office 2. But yet in the same Order they think they have a true Episcopacy as to degree first in the foresaid City Pastors that have Curates secondly in the President of the Synod 3. And they think that those Writers Papists and Protestants are in the right who expound the word Presbytery which laid hands on Timothy of a Session of Presbyters and therefore that such have power to Ordain 4. And they think that if after their faithfullest search they should in this be mistaken against their wills God will not therefore disown their Churches Ministry and Worship no more than he will reject the Prayers of private Christians for their Errors and Imperfections IV. Those that at present are called Nonconformists in England who were about 2000 Ejected and Silenced Anno 1662. Aug. 24. 1. Many of them yea most that were above 44 years old were Ordained by Bishops of whom I am one 2. The Generality of the rest lived when by the Rulers that had such possession as they could not resist Diocesane Ordination was forbidden and another set up and we heard not of five Bishops in England that did Ordain and hardly knew how to procure it of these And the Oath of Allegiance might have cost both the Bishop and the Ordained their Lives or Liberties at least in the Times of Usurpation 3. They were Ordained by a Classis or Synod of Ministers of whom some were chief City Pastors that had Curates which saith Grotius de Imper. Sum. Pol. were a sort of Bishops and they had a President 4. Some were not satisfied with this and were secretly Ordained by the deposed Bishops 5. Some desired Confirmation of their Ordination aforesaid by the Synods from such Bishops as owned it and had it from Bishop Usher at least of others I am uncertain 6. The Generality of them that had any Parsonages or Vicarages or any endowed Cures in England from the Year 1646 till the time that the Westminster Assembly was Dissolved had a formal authorizing Instrument of Approbation from the said Assembly or National Synod chosen by the Parliament of which the Catalogue in their Ordinance sheweth us that divers Bishops were by the Parliament chosen Members If any or all refused to be there the Countrey Ministers knew not that but justly took them to be parts of the Synod And though this was not an Ordination by Imposition of Hands they supposed that it was as valid to authorize them as the Acts before-mentioned of some ancient Bishops who ordained absent Men. And the main Body of the late Ejected Ministers very few excepted were thus called confirmed approved and put in having also the Consent or Election usually of the Patron and the People and the then Rulers Sect. XIV And there were many that in those Times were only Ordained Deacons and took the Synods Letters of Approbation for the substance of an Ordination to be Presbyters but wanting the Formality submitted to Diocesane Ordination when the Diocesanes returned of whom Dr. Manton was one Yea divers submitted to be Re-ordained by the Diocesanes that had been Ordained Presbyters before This is the Nonconformists Case except some few Independents that were not for formal Ordination at least so much as the rest yet even of them such as had Benefices in Anno 1646 1647 1648 had the Synods Approbation Sect. XV. To all this I must add That by the Diocesanes Silencing multitudes of those Ministers whom the most Religious accounted the most able holy powerful Preachers in the days of Queen Elizabeth King James King Charles I. besides the 2000 Silenced in the beginning of King Charles II. the People that were most serious in matters of Religion were except a few so alienated from the Diocesanes that most of the stricter Religious Sort would not choose a Minister that was for them and their Ordination and so it would have made a more dangerous Schism than was made Sect. XVI And as to the present state and practice of the Nonconformists premising that I speak only of meer Nonconformists as such and not Men of other Principles and Parties that Conform not as Jews Turks Socinians Papists Familists Quakers c. let it be understood 1. That they take all the Parishes
THE TRUE AND ONLY WAY OF CONCORD Of all the Christian Churches The desirableness of it and the detection of false dividing Terms Opened by RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for John Hancock at the Three Bibles in Popes-head-alley over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil 1680. Act. 15. 28. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things Rom. 14. 17 18. The Kingdome of God is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost for he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men 2 Tim. 4. 1 2. I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdome Preach the word be instant in season and out of season Act. 4. 19. Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken to you more than unto God judge ye 1 Thes 2. 15 16. They please not God and are contrary to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sin alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost Mr. Jones of the 〈…〉 Soveraign p. 344. Id fit quod jure fit 〈…〉 but great Lords of Nullities by the exemption of the Will and soul from and the frown of Heaven upon all bruitish injustice and force Read him also p. 23. THE PREFACE To the Honourable and Reverend Dr. George Morley late Lord Bishop of Worcester and now of Winchester and Dr. Peter Gunning Lord Bishop of Ely IT is now about eighteen years since you and many others were appointed by his Majesties commission with divers of us who desired some Reformation of the Church Discipline and worship to consider what Alterations of the Liturgy were necessary and expedient for the satisfaction of tender consciences and the restoring and continuance of peace and Vnity to the Churches under his Majesties protection and government His Majesties Gracious Declaration about Ecclesiastical Affairs had before shewed so much of his Wisdome and care to attain this Unity as we thought had almost done the cure the differences about Church Government and most of the rest being thereby as we hoped fairly ended As with the help of the Reverend Dr. Sparrow now Bishop of Norwich and Dr. Pierson now Bishop of Chester you maintained that no Alteration was necessary to these ends so I with others endeavoured to prove the contrary But since the said Declaration being dead such Alterations were made as greatly increased our Impossibility of Conforming we never treated with you for Presbyterian Government or Independent but for Vnity and peace Nor did we herein offer you any worse than Arch-bishop Vshers Form of the Primitive Episcopal Government which I had declared my judgement of before in print And I never heard of the name of Episcopal Presbyterians or Presbyterian Archbishops till of late And we thankfully accepted much less than that Form as granted in his Majesties foresaid Declaration As I doubt not but you still think that your way was best for the healing of the Church and Land so I know that I have greatly incurred both your displeasures for what I have said and done against your way One of you shewed it in a Printed Letter long ago which when I had answered I cast that aside for Peace believing that the opening of so many mistakes in matter of fact would not be easily born The other of you since told me that he would Petition authority that we might be compelled to give our Reasons as if we kept up a Schism and would not tell why I rejoiced at the motion and offered to beg leave on my knees to do it Since then your Mr. Walton in his Life of Bishop Sanderson hath called me by name to remember our debate aforesaid I know not of any two men living that I am now more obliged to give an account to of my continued dissent than unto you My judgement is not in my own power nor in yours Many are dead who were in that consultation You and I by Gods great mercy are yet alive and may review our actions before we come to the Bar of God which is like to be speedily to me and to you it cannot be far off especially to the elder of you so that I suppose that all three of us are really beyond the motives of any personal worldly interest what is this world to us who are taking our farewel of it for ever All the doubt then remaining is whether your terms or those desired by us are the true way of Love and Concord and which are the true causes of Schisms and the attendant evils I doubt not but you still think that the good which you have done doth far weigh down all the direct and accidental hurt What that Good is you know better than I Dr. Heylin in the Life of Arch-Bishop Laud tells us what some accounted then most desirable And how much more desirable it is to open the Church doors so wide as that moderate Loyal Romanists may come in as they did in Queen Elizabeths first years and to reconcile them by nearer approaches or concessions rather than to go further from them to unite with a few inconsiderable Puritans whose principles are against the Power and Wealth of the Church we have often heard from others As also that the ejection of the near two thousand non-conforming Ministers was the Churches deliverance from them that would have done more hurt within than they can do without The converted Priest Mr. Smith in his Narrative of the Popish Plot dedicated to the King nameth more reasons which I will not name which some were moved by For my part as with fear I foresaw so with grief I see so many hundred Ministers under the restraints and penalties which you know of of whom I have better thoughts than you have believing from my heart by the acquaintance which I have had with very many that notwithstanding the faulty former actions of some few of them and the unjustifiable scruples of others you cannot name that Nation under heaven out of our Kings Dominions which hath this day so many Ministers more sound in doctrine heart and life and liker to further mens salvation than those that in England have been silenced and cast out Name that countrey if you can And I believe that Christ hath given us no supernumeraries of such useful men but if all faithful Ministers Conformists and Non-conformists were employed and encouraged they would be still too few to do the work upon the ignorant ungodly and vicious which is to be done And considering how many souls a faithful Minister may hope to edifie and save I consider then how many thousands are like to be losers where such are lost and wanting It grieveth my soul to see what advantage Satan hath got in England against that Christian Love which is the
life and character of Christs disciples and to cause wrath envy hatred and strife when God saith He that hateth his brother is a murderer and no murderer hath eternal life in him 1 Joh. 3. 15. It grieveth me to see preachers against preachers and Churches against Churches and in Press and Pulpit Learning and Oratory imployed to render brethren odious and keep up a heart war against each other and all this O fearful as in the name of Christ and as for the safety of the Church and Kingdome To see families against families and father against son and as Guelphes and Gibelines Cities and Countreys in their ordinary discourses at the least accusing contemning and reproaching one another It grieveth me to think how much first the honour and then the success of the Ministry on both sides is hereby hindered and what temptations some have to further injuries which I am loth to name And how by all this the wicked and Infidels are hardened the weak are scandalized the Papists are encouraged to despise us all and many turn to them scandalized by our discord sects are advantaged the Church and Kingdome by divisions weakened and the King denyed the comfort which he might have in a loving united and concordant people I believe that you dislike all this as well as I All the question hath been and still is which is the true way of Cure And one would think that 1. the nature of the thing and 2. the experience of all the Christian world 3. and our own new experience these seventeen or eighteen years might resolve men of lower parts than ours Is there no better way to the Churches concord than that which must cast out either such men as you or I and that so many Can a wise Physicion a true Peace-maker find out no remedy which may better avoid the foresaid evils O what a loss had England in the removal of such healing men as Bishop Vsher Hall Davenant Brownrig c. Far was I and am I from liking any former injury to such men by Covenant or abuse But it hath been ever the just misery of the persecutors of worthy men to have the stone fly back on their own heads and to be themselves undone by striving to undo others while they first make and then stir up a multitude of enemies for their own defence who else would be friends and live in peace I am fully perswaded that in this book I have told you a righter way of Christian Church concord more divine sure harmless and comprehensive fitted by Christ himself to the interest of all good men yea of the Church and all the world I offer it first to you that you and posterity may see what it was that I desired and that if I here err you will faithfully detect my errour that I may repent before I die and may leave behind me the recantation of this and all my other mistakes and miscarriages as I intend to do upon just conviction But do it quickly or else I am not like to see it And I purpose not to provoke you by any confutation but to improve your evidence for my self And to answer the earnest demand of our Reasons by you the Lord Bishop of Eli I have also published an Historical Narrative of our case and judgement in another Book called The Non-conformists Plea for Peace If much contrary to my expectation you should be convinced that These Terms of Vnity and Concord are righter than those which you above all men that I know have effectually helpt to bring us under I humbly crave that you will use as much earnestness and diligence to procure the Churches concord by promoting them as you did for that which you then thought righter I have here opened those reasons which made me believe that the fourteenth and fifteenth Chapter to the Romans decideth our controversie and is to be understood as I then maintained If it prove the necessary Truth which is here offered you I beseech you see that prejudice resist it not It would be a happy work could we procure the reviving of Christian Love Unity and Concord that all Christs servants might strive together for the hallowing of Gods name the promoting of his Kingdome and the doing of his will with Love and Concord as it is done in Heaven And when instead of worldly wealth and grandure we are contented with our daily bread and instead of cruelty to the innocent or weak we bewail our own sins and forbear and forgive one another and instead of tempting men to the evil of wrath and making battering Cannons and tearing engines of Schism we cease to be over-wise in our own conceits and to judge despise and ruine others then we shall be in a hopeful way to this we shall then receive him that is weak even in the faith much more about our lesser matters even as Christ received us and not to doubtful disputations and he that pleaseth God by that in which his Kingdome doth consist will be also approved by us and we shall better learn what that meaneth I will have mercy and not sacrifice and that none of our Church power is given for destruction but for edification and so we shall not condemn the guiltless nor smite the Shepherds and scatter the flocks and then hunt them about as Schismaticks and see the mote of dissent from a formality ceremony or word in their eye while we see not this great beam in our own How joyfully should we die might we leave behind us by our endeavours a healed Church and Nation and see first this desired unity which would be the strength ease and joy of Ministers and people King and Subjects and a hopeful pattern to the divided Churches abroad to imitate If you will not contribute your help hereto those will who shall have the honour and comfort of being the blessed instruments of our concord if God have so much mercy for us I once more repeat to you the pacificators old despised words Si in Necessariis sit Vnitas in non-necessariis Libertas In utrisque Charitas optimo certe loco essent res nostrae Pardon this freedome and accept this Account of the reasons of all his former and later dissent from your judgement words and way to Nov. 15. 1679. Your unfeigned well-willer RICHARD BAXTER A Premonition Reader UPon the review of this book I find some things which may be to some an occasion of offence if this premonition prevent it not I. Some may think when I say Diocesan Prelacy Arch-Bishops and Patriarchs are not to be made necessary to Universal or subordinate Church Concord as being uncapable terms or means thereof that I speak against the Lawfulness of all Episcopacy when I speak but against such necessity of that sort Know therefore 1. that I meddle not with the question Whether every particular Church of Pastor and people associate for personal Church Communion such as Ignatius describeth should have a Bishop with
his Presbyters and Deacons 2. Nor with the question whether these should have Arch-Bishops over them as successours to the Apostolical and other general Overseers of the first age in the ordinary continued parts of their office 3. Nor whether Patriarchs Diocesans and Lay Chancellours as officers of the King exercising under him such Government of the Church as belongeth to Kings according to our Oath of Supremacy be lawful to which in such exercise all subjects must for Conscience sake submit 4. Nor whether it was well done or of Divine appointment that about temporal matters as well as Church Controversies the Bishops were chosen arbitrators by the ancient Christians and so did that which Christian Magistrates now must do till upon the conversion of Princes and States the said Power of externals circa sacra fell into their hands 5. Nor yet if Diocesans become the sole Bishops infimi ordinis over many hundred Parishes all the Bishops and Parish Churches under them being put down and turned into Curates and Chapels partes ecclesiae infimae speciei whether a Minister and every Subject ought yet to live quietly and peaceably under them It is none of these that are the questions which I decide II. In my confutation of Mr. Dodwell some may mistake me as if I denied that our Religion had come down to us by a continued succession from the Apostles or that the ministerial office in specie or that the Vniversal Church had ever been without a true Ministry or Religion I have proved where our Church was in all ages before Luther in my second book against Johnson alias Terret Nor do I say what I do to avoid deriving our Ministerial succession from Rome For History puts me out of doubt that the multitude of uncapable Popes and Schisms will prove a far greater interruption of Canonical and Legitimate succession at Rome than can be proved of England and perhaps than hath happened to almost any other Church in the world And I am fully satisfied that the present Church of England as National deriveth its succession from the ancient Brittish and Scottish Church and not from Rome and that Christianity was the Religion of England long before Gregory or Augustine the Monks days and that notwithstanding Gildas his smart reproofs when the Brittish and Scottish Clergy and people disclaimed all obedience to the Pope and would not so much as eat or lodge in the same house with Gregory's Clergy the persons were better or at least their doctrine and Religion more sound than that which Rome did afterwards obtrude And as the blood of this nation though called English will upon just consideration be found to be twenty if not an hundred fold more British than either Roman Saxon or Norman so the Ordination of the Bishops is derived so much more from the Brittains and Scots than from Rome as that Augustine the Monks successours were afterward almost quite extinct only one Wini a Simonist being left in anno 668. the rest of the Bishops being all of Brittish ordination All which with much more of great importance is so fully proved after Usher by M. T. Jones of Oswestree late Chaplain to the Duke of York in an excellent Historical Treatise hereof called Of the Heart and its right Soveraign that I am sorry that book is no more commonly bought and read But withal I must say that this our certain succession disproveth the Papists and Mr. Dodwells plea for the necessity of their sort of Episcopal Canonical uninterrupted succession For as the Bishops of Denmark have their succession but from Bugenhagius Pomeranus a Presbyter his ordination so Aidan and Finan that came from Scotland out of Columbanus Monastery were no Bishops as Beda and others fully testifie And after Beda and others Mr. Jones hath cleared it that it was not only the Northern Bishops that were ordained by Aidan and Finan and Dhuma but that the Bishops of the whole land had their ordination derived from them and such as they and those whom they ordained so that the denying of the Validity of the Ordination by Presbyters shaketh the succession of the Episcopal Church of England and proveth it on that supposition interrupted And if they derive it from Rome it will be as much shaken III. In perusal I find that I have more than once mentioned some things in this treatise and the repetition may be an offense to some To which I say 1. That this is usual in controversies where several objections and occasions call for the same material answer 2. But I confess it is the effect of my hast and weakness And it is my judgement while I think that I write no needless books that I should rather write any one that is truly useful with such imperfections of manner and style as only so far disgrace the author than for want of time to leave it undone to the loss of others But if it be needless it is a greater fault to write it than to write it no more accurately My dear friend and judicious brother Mr. John Corbett hath newly published a small book to the same purpose with this of the true state of Religion and Interest of the Church with a discourse of Schism which I commend to the Reader as much worthy of his perusal and which if written on the hearts of Rulers and Teachers and people according to its certain truth and weight would heal us all The Lord forgive our heinous sins which deserve that he should excommunicate and forsake us and save England from English men and save us all from our selves our most dangerous enemies and Christians and Pastors and friends from one another For as Mr. Jones his Welsh Proverb saith Though thy dog be thy own trust him not when he is mad IV. I hear some say of my book that cometh out with this of the case of the Non-conformists and may say of this that 1. It is unseasonable to mention our own differences when we are called to unite against the Papists 2. And that too hard-accusations of conformity are intimated I answer to the first 1. That it is never more seasonable to write for Vnity than when we are most obliged to unite Though indeed it can never be unseasonable And to take Non-conformists for heinous Schismaticks and call on Magistrates to silence and imprison and ruine them is not the way to unity nor consisteut with it and therefore to deprecate such unpeaceable ways is the necessary work of a Peacemaker 2. I have waited in vain these seventeen years for a fit season And with me in likelyhood it must be Now or Never for there is no doing it in the grave and I dare not die and leave it undone on pretence that it was not seasonable To the second I say 1. I have professed that I write not to accuse Conformists but if men accuse us as enemies to order obedience and peace and as fit for silencing and utter ruine and tell the
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The Text opened and the Doctrines and Method proposed EPHES. 4. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Endeavouring or carefully or diligently studying to keep the Vnity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace HAD not the distempers of the minds even of Religious persons and the long and sad divisions and distractions of Christians assured me that this Text is not commonly understood and regarded as the Apostles vehement Exhortation and the importance and reason of the matter do bespeak yea had not the long bleeding wounds of the Church made by its Pastors and most zealous members still cryed out aloud for pity and help I had not chosen this subject at this time But after the complaints and exhortations and tears of the wisest and best men since the days of Christ after the long miseries of the Church and the long and costly experience of all ages the destroying Spirit of division still possesseth the most and maketh some of the possessed to rage and foam tear themselves and all that are in their power it haunteth the holy assemblies and disquieteth the lovers of unity and peace and by the scandals which it raiseth it frighteneth children and unstable persons out of their religion and their wits And therefore after the many books which I have written for Vnity Love and Peace and the many years preaching and praying to that end I find it yet as necessary as ever to Preach on the same Subject and to recite the same things and while I am in this Tabernacle which I must shortly put off to stir you up that after my decease you may have it in remembrance 2 Pet. 1. 12 13 14. And could I persuade the Churches of Christ to seek by fasting and fervent prayer the dispossessing of this distracting Spirit by which only this evil kind goeth out our languishing hopes might yet revive If Paul found it necessary to cry down division and plead for Unity so frequently and so vehemently as he doth to those new planted Churches of Rome Corinth Ephesus Galatia Philippi Thessalonica c. which had been founded by the means of miracles and had so much of the spirit of Unity and Community and had Apostles among them to preserve their peace what wonder if we that are much ignorant of the Apostles minds and of the Primitive pattern and have less of the Spirit have need to be still called upon to study to keep the Vnity of the Spirit in the bond of peace They that preach Twenty or an hundred Sermons for Purity and scarce one with equal Zeal for Vnity and Peace do not sufficiently discern that Purity and Peace are the inseparable fruits of the wisdom from above which live and die together and with them the souls and societies of believers This famous Church of Ephesus is it which Paul Act. 20. had so long laid out his labours in even publickly from house to house night and day with tears which was famous for its greatness and the open profession of Christ where even the price of the vain unlawful books which they openly burnt came to fifty thousand pieces of silver This is the Church that first of the seven is written to by Christ Rev. 2. Whose works labour and patience even without fainting were known and praised by the Lord which proved and disproved the false Apostles which hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans And yet Paul saw cause Act. 20. 30. to foretell them prophetically of their temptations to division that they should be tryed by both extreams as other Churches were and are that on one side grievous Wolves or Church tyrants should enter not sparing the stâ—ck and on the other side of themselves should men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples by Schism separation after them And to this excellent Church he seeth cause here to urge the Persuasives to the vigilant preservation of Vnity in this Chapter Having in the three first Chapters instructed them in the high mysteries of Election Redemption and the fruits thereof and magnified the riches of Grace in Christ and the spiritual knowledge thereof that we may know what Vse he principally intended he here beginneth his application 1. With a moving reason from his Person and Condition v. 1. I the Prisoner of the Lord As if he should say As ever you will regard the doctrine and counsel of your Teacher and Christs Apostle now I am in bonds for the doctrine which I preach 2. With words of earnest request I beseech you 3. With the matter of his request 1. In general that they walk worthy the calling wherewith they were called Beza need not have avoided the vulgar and proper translation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and put quod convenit for worthy for worthiness can signifie nothing but moral congruity 2. Specially this worthiness consisteth in the holy and healthful constitution of their souls and the exercise thereof In their inward disposition and their answerable practice 1. The inward qualifications are 1. All lowliness 2. Meekness 3. Love 2. The fruits of these are 1. Long-suffering 2. Forbearing one another 3. And Studying to keep the Vnity of the spirit in the bond of peace Which Vnity is particularly described in the Terms and reasons of it which are seven 1. One Body 2. One Spirit 3. One hope 4. One Lord. 5. One faith 6. One Baptism 7. One God and Father who is above all and through all and in them all But negatively not in an equality of Grace in all the members for that is various according to the measure of the gift of Christ the free Benefactor I must pass by all unnecessary explication and the handling of the many useful Lessons which offer themselves to us in the way such as these following Doct. 1. It should not depreciate the counsels of Christs Ministers that they are sent or written from a prison or bonds but rather procure their greater acceptance when they are not imprisoned for evil doing but for Preaching or obeying the Gospel and Law of Christ it is their honour and the honour of that doctrine which they suffer for why else keep you days of thanksgiving and Commemoration of the Martyrs On the persecutors part Christ is evil spoken of or blasphemed but by the sufferers he is glorified and therefore he will glorifie
them I was once blamed for dating a book out of the Common gaol or prison in London as if it reflected on the Magistrate But I imitated Paul and mentioned nothing which the Rulers took for a dishonour as their actions shewed Doct. 2. Beseeching is the mode and language of wise and faithful Pastors in pleading for Vnity and against Schism in the Church For they are not Lords over the flocks but helpers of their faith They have no power of the sword but of the word They rule not by constraint but willingly nor such as are constrained by them but Voluntiers It is not the way to win Love to God to Pastors or to one another to say Love me or I will lay thee in a gaol stripes are useful to cause fear and timerous obedience but not directly to cause Love And hated Preachers seldom prosper in Converting or Edifying souls or healing disordered divided Churches Doct. 3. Though Grace find us unworthy it maketh men such as walk worthy of their high and heavenly calling that is in a suitable conversation answerable to the principles of their faith and hope Christianity were little better than the false Religions of the world if it made men no better If Christ made not his disciples greatly to differ from the disciples of a meer philosopher he would not be â—hought greatly to differ from them himself The â—ruits of his doctrine and spirit on our hearts and lives are the proofs and witness of his truth we wrong him heinously when we live but like other men And we weaken our own and other mens faith by obscuring a great evidence of the Christian Verity And those that are of eminent holiness and righteousness of life are the great and powerful preachers of faith and shew men by proofs and not only by words that Christ is true Doct. 4. Lowliness is a great part of Christian worthiness and a necessary cause of Christian Vnity and peace This 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but the same thing which Paul elsewhere Act. 20. 19. tells this same Church that he practised towards them exemplarily himself Lowliness of mind containeth both low and humble thoughts of our selves and low expectations as to honour and respect from others with a submissive temper that can stoop and yield and a deportment liker to the lower sort of people than to the stout and great ones of the world As Mat. 5. to be poor in spirit is to have a spirit fit for a state of poverty not in Love with riches but content with little and patient with all that poor men must endure so Lowliness of mind is a disposition and deportment not like the Grandees of the world but suited to Low persons and Low things condescending to the lowest persons employments and indignities or contempt that shall be cast upon us A proud high-minded person that is looking for preferment and must be somebody in the world is of a spirit contrary to that of Christianity and will never lie even in the sacred Edifice nor be a healer but a troubler of the Church of Christ and must be converted and become as a little child before he can enter into the Kingdom of heaven Mat. 18. 3. And indeed only by selfishness and pride have come the divisions and contentions in the Church even by those that have made it the means of their domination to cry down division because they must have all to Unite in them in Conformity to their opinions Interests and wills A humble soul that can be content to follow a Crucified Christ and to be made of no reputation Phil. 2. 7. Heb. 12. 1 2 3. and to be a servant to all and a Lord of none and can yield and stoop and be despised when ever the ends of his office do require it is a Christian indeed and fit to be a healer Doct. 5. Meekness or Lenity is another part of Christian worthiness and a necessary cause of Vnity and Peace Though in some this hath extraordinary advantage or disadvantage in the temperature of the body yet it is that which persons of all tempers may be brought to by grace A boisterous furious or wild kind of disposition is not the Christian healing spirit If passion be apt to stir wisdom and grace must repress it and Lenity must be our ordinary temper we must be like tame creatures that familiarly come to a mans hand and not like wild things that flye from us as untractable otherwise how will such in Love and peace and sociable concord ever carry on the work of Christ Doct. 6. Love to each other is a great part of Christian worthiness and a most necessary cause of Vnity and peace Of which I hope to say so much by it self if God will as that I shall here pass it by It being the very Heart and Life of Vnity Doct. 7. Long suffering or a patient mind not rash or hasty is another part of Christian worthiness and a necessary Cause of Vnity and peace 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath more in it than many well consider of I know it is commonly taken for restraint of anger by patient long-suffering But I think that it chiefly signifieth here and elsewhere in Pauls Epistles that deliberate slowness and calmness of mind which is contrary to passionate haste and rashness When a passionate man is hasty and rash and cannot stay to hear another speak for himself nor to deliberate of the matter and search out the truth nor forbear revenge while he thinketh whether it will do good or harm or what the case will appear in the review this Longanimity will stay men and compose their minds and cause them to take time before they judge of opinions practices or persons and before they venture to speak or do lest what they do in haste they repent at leisure It appeaseth those passions which blind the judgment when wrath doth precipitate men into those conceptions words and deeds which they must after wish that they had never known Hasty rashness in judging and doing for want of the patience lenity of a slow deliberating mind is the cause of most errors Heresies and divisions and of abundance of sin and misery in the world Doct. 8. Bearing supporting and forbearing one another in Love is another part of Gospel worthiness and needful means of Vnity and peace Doubtless to forbear each other patiently under injuries and provocations is a great part of the duty here meant But both Beza who translated it sustinentes and the Vulgar Latine which translateth it supportantes seemed to think that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth something more While we are imperfect sinful men we shall have need of mutual support and help yea we shall be injurious provoking and troublesome to each other And when Christians yea Church Pastors are so far from supporting and sustaining the weak that they cannot so much as patiently bear their censures neglects or other effects of weakness Unity
peace they did not serve the Lord Jesus whose great and last command was Love which he made the Nature and character and badge of his true disciples but by those good words and fair speeches deceived the hearts of the simple and deceivable Here there are four words especially to be noted 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we translate good words is commonly translated flattery but as Beza well noteth it signifieth a speaking of things that are plausible in themselves for some good that is in them and that are pretended to be all spoken for the hearers good as Satan pretended when he tempted Eve yea perhaps to be necessary to their salvation or to make them the most knowing and excellent sort of Christians 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth both to Bless them as ministers do that desire their happiness and to praise them and speak well or highly of them And so almost all sects and divided bodies are gathered by flattering the hearers into a conceit that thus they shall become the surest and most excellent Christians and all others are far inferiour to them 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is the Hearts of such hearers that are deceived and not their heads or reason only or chiefly For the good words first take with them by moving their Passions or affections And then the Praise fair promises and speeches kindle a kind of secret spiritual pride and ambition in the heart as Satans words did in Eve to be as Gods in Knowledge And the Heart thus infected and puft up promoteth the deceit of the understanding 4. And this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hominum minime malorum as Beza translates It is not simple fools but such simple persons as we call harmless or innocents as the Vulgar Latine translates it well meaning men or not ill men People that fear God and have good desires and meanings are for want of Judgement and watchfulness overcome by dividers And on the contrary the amiable examples of Vnity and Concord and their happy effects are recorded in Scripture to make us in Love with them but none so eminent as that of the first Christians It is very remarkable that when Christ would shew the world the work of his Mediation in its notable effects and when he would shew them the excellency of his disciples about the common world and of his Church under the Gospel above that under Moses Law he doth it by shewing them in the power and exercise of Vniting Love Love was it which he came to exercise and demonstrate his Fathers and his own Love was that which he came to kindle in their souls and bring them to possess and practise Perfect Love is the perfect felicity which he hath promised them Love and Unity are the matter of his last and great Command These are the Characters of his genuine disciples and of the renewed Divine Nature in them It was Love and Vnity which must in them be the witness of Christs spirit and power to convince the unbelieving world And therefore it is Love and Vnity which is the matter of his last excellent prayer for them John 17. 22 23 24 25. 15. 12 17. 13. 34. 1 John 3. 14 23. 4. 21. And all these his preparations precepts examples and prayers were accordingly exemplified in the wonderful Love and Concord of his followers When the day of Pentecost was come in which the Holy Ghost must be most eminently communicated to them they were all with One accord in one place Acts 2. 1. The Apostles had an Vnanimity and Concord before proportionable to the measure of their grace which was preparatory to their reception of the eminent gift of the Spirit which increased their unanimity And v. 41 42 43 44 45 46. the three thousand that were suddenly added to the Church continued stedfastly in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers And all that believed were together and had all things common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need And they continuing daily with one accord in the Temple and breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart praising God and having favour with all the people What greater demonstration could be given that Christ is the great Reconciler the messenger gift and teacher of Love the Prince of Peace and the great Vniter of the divided world both with his Father and Himself and with one another In this text Acts 2. and marvellous example you see the design and work of the great Reconciler When men fall out with God they fall out with one another when they depart from the only Center of Vnity they can have no true Unity among themselves when they lose the Love of God they lose the Love of Man as for Gods sake and interest And he that cannot see and Love God in man can see nothing in man that is worthy of much love As he that loveth not a man for his soul and its operations more than for his body loveth him not as a man And few have any great Love to a dead Corpse Cicero could say It is your soul that we speak to and converse with were that departed we should speak to you no more God is more to every man than his soul If God were not their life and amiableness all men would be unlovely loathsome carkasses Therefore wicked men that cannot Love God and Goodness can Love none thoroughly but themselves and for themselves or as Bruâ—es by a low or sensitive kind of love For it is self that they are fallen to from God and Man And yet while self is carnally and inordinately loved instead of God and Man it is but destroyed and undone by that inordinate idolatrous love And he that loveth Himself to his own destruction with a Love more pernicious than anothers hatred doth love his friends but with such a kind of killing love as I have seen some Brutes kill their young ones with the violence of their love that would not suffer them to let them alone Thus all love to man saving a pernicious love doth dye where the love of God and goodness dieth And Cain giveth the world the first specimen or instance of depraved nature in envy and wrath and finally in the murder of his Brother and undoing Himself by setting up and adhering inordinately to himself But when Christ reconcileth God and Man he reconcileth Men to one another For he teacheth men to love God in Man and Man for God with a Holy noble reasonable kind of Love And so to love all men as far as God hath an Interest in all And to Love all Christians with an eminent Love as God is eminently interessed in them And this is Christs work on the souls of men and much of his business which he came for into the world And therefore he would have his
first Disciples to give the world such a specimen of Love in this extraordinary way of Community For as extraordinary works of Power that is Miracles must be wrought by the first Preachers of the Gospel to shew Christs power and convince the unbelieving world so it was as needful that then there should be extraordinary works of Love to shew Christs Love and teach them the great work of Love which he came to call and bring men to For the first Book that Christ wrote was on the Hearts of Men which no Philosopher could do In fleshly tables he wrote LOVE TO GOD and MAN by the finger of his Spirit many a year before any Book of the New Testament was written And as his Doctrine was Love one another and Love your enemies forbear and forgive c. so his first Churches must extraordinarily exemplifie and express this doctrine by living in this extraordinary community and selling all and distributing as each had need And afterwards their Love-feasts did long keep up some memorial of it For they were the first sheet as it were of the New Book which Christ was publishing And LOVE was the summ of all that was imprinted on them And their Practice was to be much of the Preaching that must convert the world Christ was not a meer Orator or teacher of Words And non magna loquimur sed vivimus was the profession of his disciples He came not meerly to talk and teach men to talk but to Do and teach men to Do even to do that himself which none else ever did and to teach his followers to do that which no other sort of men did in this world But this leadeth me up to the next Use of Unity V. The SPIRIT of UNITY and LOVE is the Great means of the Churches increase There is a twofold augmentation of the Church 1. Intrinsick and Intensive when it Increaseth in all Goodness and hasteth to perfection And it is this Vital principle of Vniting Love or the Spirit of Vnity which is the immediate cause of this 2. Extensive when the Church is enlarged and more are added to it And it is a Life of Vniting Love among Christians that must do this as much or more than preaching Or at least if that preaching which is but the effect of Knowledge produce Evangelical Knowledge in the hearers yet a Life of Love and Vnity is the adapted means of breeding Love and Vnity the Life of Religion in the world Light may cause Light but Heat must cause Heat and it must be a Living thing that must generate life by ordinary causation That which cometh from the Head may reach the Head and perhaps the Heart but is not so fit to operate on Hearts as that which cometh from the heart Undoubtedly if Christians did commonly live in such Love and Vnity among themselves and shew the fruits of common Love to all about them as their Great master and his Religion teacheth them they would do wonders in converting sinners and enlarging the Church of Jesus Christ Who could stand out against the convincing and Attractive power of Uniting Love Who could much hate and persecute those that Love them and shew that Love This would heap melting coals of fire on their heads Our Saviour knew this when he made this his great Lesson to his disciples and when he prayed Joh. 17. 21 22 23 24. over and over for them which should believe on him through the Apostles word that they all may be One as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that thou hast sent me And the Glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be One even as we are One I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in One and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me O when will Christ revive this blessed principle in his followers and set them again on this effectual way of preaching that Love may draw the world into the Churches Vnity Some look for new miracles for the converting of the now-forsaken Nations what God will do of that kind we know not for he hath not told us But Holy Vniting Vniversal Love is a thing which he hath still made our certain duty and therefore we are all bound to seek and do it And therefore we may both pray and labour for it in hope And could we but come up to this known duty we should have a means for the worlds conversion as effectual as miracles and more sweet and pleasant to them and us Obj. But why then is the world still unconverted when all true Christians have this love Ans 1. Alas those true Christians are so few and the hypocrites that are selfish worldlings are so many that the poor people that live among professed Christians do judge of Christianity by those false professours who are indeed no Christians Men see not the hearts of one another Thousands of ungodly persons for interest education and custome take on them the name of Christians who never were such indeed by heart-consent When these counterfeit Christians live like Infidels men think that Christians are no better than Infidels For they think they must judge by the greater number of such as go under the Christian name But if the world could tell who they be that are truly Christians at the heart they would see that they have that spirit of Love which is not in unbelievers 2. And alas the Love and Vnity even of true Christians is yet too imperfect and is darkened and blemished with too much of the contrary vice were Christians perfect Christians they would indeed be the honour of their profession Then Love would be the powerful principle of all their works which would taste of its nature and as it is said of Wine Judg. 9. 13. it cheereth God and man so I may say God and man would be delighted in the sweetness of these fruits For with such Sacrifice God is well pleased Heb. 13. 16. But alas what crabbed and contrary fruits how soure how bitter do many distempered Christians bring forth If it will increase the Church and win men to the Love of Christianity to be reviled or persecuted to be contemned and neglected to be separated from as persons unworthy of our-love and kindness then Christianity will not want propagaters The pouring out of the Spirit was the first planting of the Christian Church And where there is most of Love there is most of the spirit As there needeth no forcing penal Laws to compel men to obey God so far as Love prevaileth in them so if Love were more eminent in the Church Pastors and Professors that they preached and ruled and lived towards all men in the power of sincere and fervent Love there would be less pretence for all that violence oppression and cruelty which hath been long
exercised by the worldly Clergy and so much the more odiously by how much the more the sacred name of Religion hath been used for its justification or excuse VI. UNITING LOVE is the GLORY and Perfection of the Church And therefore there will be in Heaven much greater Love and much nearer UNITY than there is of the dearest friends on earth yea greater and nearer than we can now distinctly understand And again I say that they that in thinking of the state of separated souls do fear lest all souls do lose their individuation and fall into one common soul do foolishly fear a greater Vnity than is to be expected And yet nothing else about the souls Immortality is lyable to a rational doubt For 1. It s substance certainly is not annihilated 2. Nor its formal essential Virtues lost by mutation into some other species 3. Nor doth the Activity of such an Active nature cease 4. Nor will there want objects for it to act upon Were it well considered that LOVE is as Natural to a soul as Heat is to the Sun that is an effect of that Act which its very essence doth perform 2. And that our UNITY is an Unity of LOVE Voluntarily performed it would much abate such selfish fears of too much Unity For who ever feared too much Love too extensive or too intensive too large or too near a Union of minds And as the beloved Apostle saith that GOD IS LOVE as a name which signifieth his essence why may not the same be said of souls which are his Image that A SOUL IS LOVE Not that this is an Adequate conception of A SOUL much less of GOD but of the partial or inadequate Conceptions it seemeth to be the chiefest The SOVL of Man is a Pure or Spiritual substance informed by a Virtue of Vital activity Intellection and Volition which is LOVE informing or animating an organical body for a time and separable at the bodies dissolution And as the Calefactive Virtue is the Essence of the Fire though not an adequate Conception of its essence For it is a pure substance formally induâ—d with the Virtue Motive Illuminative and Calefactive and the act of Calefaction is its essence as operative on a due recipient so LOVE is the souls essence in the faculty or Virtue and its Essence as operative on a due object in the Act which Act though the soul exercise it not ad ultimum posse by such a Natural necessity as the fire heateth yet its Nature or Essence immediately exerciseth it though in a freâ—r manner yea some Acts of Love quoad specificationem though not quoad exercitium are exercised as necessarily as calefaction by the fire yea more though now in the body the exercise by cogitation and sense be not so necessary we cannot say that in its separated state it will not be so yea yet more even in the body the LOVE of a Mans SELF and of felicity or pleasure seemeth to be a deep constant or uncessant Act of the soul though not sensibly observed And if LOVE be so far essential to it the perfection of Love is the souls perfection and the exercises of Love are the chief operations of the soul And consequently the perfection and glory of the Church which is but a conjunction of holy persons consisteth in the same Uniting Love which perfecteth souls And indeed Vniformity in circumstantials and in external Polity were but a Carkass or Image of Unity without Uniting Love which is its soul As much external Union in good as we are capable of doth advantage Vnity of spirit But all Union in evil and all in unnecessary circumstantials which is managed to the diminution of Christian Love are to the Church but as the glory of adorned cloathing or monuments or pictures to a carkass And the Church-Tyrants that would thus Unite us and sacrifice Love and the means of it to their sort of Vnity are but like the Physician that prescribed a sicâ—man a draught of his own heart blood to cure him The Inquisitors that torture mens bodies to save their souls are not more unskilful in their pretended Charity to save men than is he that hindereth or destroyeth Love while he seeketh the Churches Unity in humane Ordinances by fraud or fear When they have killed any Church by Love killing snares and practices and glory that it is united in Papal power splendor and decrees it is but as if they cut all a mans nerves or cast him into a Palsie or killed him and gloried that they have tyed his limbs together with strings or bound them all up in the same Winding-sheet and Coffin That edifieth not the Church which tendeth not to save but to destroy mens souls CHAP. V. This Vnity conduceth to the good of the world without the Church § 1. THe chief hopes of the Heathen and Infidel world consist in their hopes of being brought into the faith and Church of Christians And as God addeth to the Church such as shall be saved so the means that our charity must use to save them is to get them into this ark The measure of their other hopes or what possibility there is of their salvation I have elsewhere plainly opened It sufficeth us here to remember that no man cometh to the Father but by the Son and that he is the Saviour of his body however he be called also the Saviour of the world § 2. And as in nature it is the principle of life in the seed and womb which is the Generating Cause of formation and augmentation of the soetuâ— And it is the vital powers in Man which maketh his daily nourishment become a living part of himself and causeth his growth So is iâ— the Spirit in the Church that is Gods appointed means to quicken and convert the Infidel world And it is those Christian Countreys which are adjoyning to Mahometans and Heathens that should do most to their conversion who have far easier means than others by proximity and converse to do it and therefore are under the greatest obligations to attempt it As also those remoter Countreys that are most in amity and traffick with them § 3. And as Instruction by evidence must do much so this Vniting Spirit of Love must do a great part of this work and that both as it worketh inwardly on our selves in the Communion of Saints and as it worketh outwardly by attraction and communication to draw in and assimilate others § 4. I. The Churches Vnity of Spirit doth fortifie and fit it for all its own offices in order to the conversion of the world All parts are better qualified for the work by that Wisdom Goodness and Life which they must work by And each member partaketh of the common strength which their Unity causeth An united Army is likest to be victorious Their routing is their flight and overthrow And the Army or Kingdom that is Mutinous or in Civil Wars or not unanimous is unfit to enlarge dominion and conquer
and do so much against their own desired ends that instead of accusing the providence of God we should thankfully wonder that there is so much peace and concord as there is and that all men live not as enemies to each others in continual war or that the devouring Pikes leave so many of the lesser fish alive and the weak and innocent are not wholly a prey to the oppressors CHAP. IX That Christ himself who commanded the Vnity Love and Concord of Christians did prescribe the necessary terms § 1. IF it be once proved that Christ himself hath prescribed the conditions or terms of Christian Union and Communion what remaineth to Christians but to enquire What are those terms Whereas for want of that necessary supposition while men think it is left to them no man knoweth who should do it and the Pope prescribeth his terms and others prescribe their terms and almost each Sect hath different terms § 2. That Christ did prescribe them I shall prove I. Antecedently à Causis II. Consequently ab Effectis III. By proving the necessary exclusion of any other competent prescribers § 3. I. Antecedently it is proved from 1. The universal necessity of the thing 2. And from the office of Christ to do things of such universal necessity and his faithfulness therein § 4. 1. There are few Christians so ignorant or inconsiderate but will confess that the Vnion of Christians is necessary not only to the edification and well being but to the very being of the Church both universal and particular For what is a Church but many Christians united and associated for Church-ends Pull all the Bricks or Timber of the house asunder and it is no house Pull all the Planks and parts of a Ship asunder and it is no Ship Pull all the leaves and sentences of a Book asunder and it is no Book Pull all the parts of a mans body asunder and there remaineth no body of a man considered formally but only materially and in their aptitude to re-union at the resurrection An Army disbanded and dissipated is no Army And certainly it is no Church that hath not Church-unity of parts 2. And all that believe in Christ believe that he came into the world to call and gather his Church and to save them and that he sent his Word his Ministers and Spirit to this end He is the principle of life to the Church his body who first by aggregation uniteth them to himself and one another and then is their constitutive and governing and quickning head It is his undertaken office first to make all his own members and then to govern preserve edifie and save them And how can Christ make his Church without uniting the members Can he build his house and never set the bricks stones or timber together Can you make a Clock or Watch without adapting and uniting the parts And can Christ gather build compaginate and unite his Church and not so much as tell men either Pastors or people what are the Conditions and terms of union and the cement or solder that must unite them § 5. And all Christians confess Christs sufficiency for his office and his perfect faithfulness in performing it He wanted neither Power Wisdom nor Love or Will to gather his own Church or body He was faithful as Moses in all Gods house And he that fulfilled all the righteousness of the Law and whatever was imposed on him as a humbled satisfier of Justice surely no less fulfilled all that belonged to him as the grand Administrator and Benefactor and Executor of Gods mercy and his own will and as Head over all things to his Church Eph. 1. 22 23. § 6. Nay as he was the King and Law giver of the Church who was to give them all their Vniversal Laws binding all men could he be supposed to have done this faithfully if he had left out the very terms of Church-unity and concord when such unity is essential to the Church Did he send the Apostles to disciple and baptize all Nations and be in Gods house the Church as Paul calleth Timothy Pillars and bases of truth yea foundations and Master-builders that must gather his Church out of all the world and yet never tell them What a Church is that is how the parts must be united As he is the Teacher of the Church did he never teach them so necessary a thing as what essential Church-unity is These are such imputations against Christ as seem to deny him to be Christ As he would deny God to be God that would deny his providence and government of the world § 7. Christs Law is to be both the Rule of our actions and his judgement And if he have left out so great a point as the essentiating terms of Church Vnion what momentous acts of our lives are left to be ungoverned and unjudged by the Laws of Christ § 8. Above all men those are bound to consent to what I say who hold that Christs Laws have not left so much as a ceremony undetermined and that nothing may be added or diminished in his worship How much less then hath he left the essentiating terms of Church-unity unprescribed § 9. II. And consequently ab effectis we find that Christ did it 1. He plainly declared what maketh a Christian 2. He declared how all Christians should live in love and concord 3. And how the coalition of these Christians maketh his Church § 10. I. It had been strange if he that came into the world to make men Christians had never told men what a Christian is And if he that sent his Apostles to make Christians had set them to do they knew not what and never told them what a Christian is and consequently what they must perswade men to And if he that promised Justification Pardon Adoption and Glory to all true believers that is to true Christians had yet never told them how they may know that they are such And that he that commanded so much Christian duty publick and private and required Christians to suffer so much for his sake and to look for a reward in Heaven should yet never tell them what Christianity is If Christ made Christianity that is the Laws and description objects and principle then he made a Determinate thing If not hath he left it to man to make Christianity objectively Then how shall we know to whom he gave this power And how many several species of Christianity or faith may be made in the world § II. It is evident in Scripture that Christ sent his Apostles and that he taught them what to preach and particularly that he Matth. 28. 19 20. said Go and Disciple me all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatever I commanded you And it is certain that a Baptized person was then accounted a Christian and Baptism was their Christening and that this was the Church entrance
form of a particular Church lawful but what is of Divine institution some hold that only a Diocesan Church that hath many Congregations and Altars is of Divine institution and that the Parochial are not Churches but Oratories or Chapels or parts of a Church Others hoâ—d that only Parochial Churches of one Altar or associated for personal Communion in presence are of Divine institution some that both Diocesane and Parochial Churches are of Divine institution and some that these and Provincial National Patriarchal and the Papal are of Divine institution Thus do mens judgements vary § 3. A third sort hold that God hath instituted some Church forms besides the Universal and left men to make others And here some think that God instituted Patriarchal and left them to make the Diocesan and Parochial some hold that God instituted only the Diocesan and left them power to make the Patriarchal and the Parochial some hold that he made only the Parochial I mean single societies associated for present personal Communion and left them by voluntary associations to make the greater over them § 4. Among these opinions let us first try whether Christ hath instituted any Church form besides the universal and 2. what that is I. And 1. if Christ hath instituted a holy Christian society for ordinary holy Communion and mutual help in Gods publick worship and holy living consisting of Pastors authorized and obliged to Teach and Guide and speak for the flock in Gods publick worship and administer his Sacraments according to Christs word and of a flock obliged to hear them learn obey and follow such their conduct to the foresaid ends then Christ hath instituted a form of a particular Church and its policy But the antecedent is true as shall be proved And the consequent or major is proved à definito ad denominatum This definition containeth the Essentials of a Church No man can deny that to be a Christian Church which hath this definition § 5. Here still it is supposed that the Spirit in the Apostles who were designed to be founders and master-builders and to gather and order Churches and teach them to observe all Christs commands was Christs promised Agent as Tertullian calls him and that Christ did what the Spirit did by the Apostles in their proper work to which he was promised them as their Guide as it is aforesaid § 6. And that Christ and his Apostles instituted sacred ordinary Assemblies of Christians for holy worship and Communion is so clear in the New Testament that it were vain to prove it § 7. And 2. as notorious and past doubt it is that the end of these Assemblies was such as is here mentioned 3. And as plain that such Pastors as are here described were set over all these Congregations and authorized and obliged to the foresaid work that is under Christ the great Teacher Priest and Ruler of the Church to Teach them Gods word to intercede under Christ for them to God and from Christ to them in prayer and Sacraments c. and to Guide them by that called the Keyes of the Church discerning whom to receive by Baptism whom to reprove exhort comfort or absolve Act. 14. 23. Act. 20. 1 Tim. 3. Tit. 1. and many other places shew this § 8. And it is no less plain that the people were bound to continue in their doctrine communion and prayer and to obey them in that which they were commissioned to do Heb. 13. 7 13 24. 10. 25 26. 1 Thes 5. 12 13. 1 Tim. 5. 17. 20. and many other places so that the form of such Churches as consist of such Congregations and their Pastors is past all denyal and just doubt § 9. And as to all other Church-forms Classical Diocesan Metropolitical Provincial National Patriarchal and Papal it is these only that fall under reasonable doubt and controversie And 1. for Classical Churches I can say but this 1. That the General commands of holding Christian Love and Concord and doing all to edification require such Churches as live near together to be helpers to each other and that counsel and correspondency is necessary hereto which the Churches have still laudably exercised by Synods And if these associations for order-sake be agreed on as to stated times and numbers and bounds it is but the circumstantiating of a known duty And if any will call this a distinct Policy or Church-form I contend not against their liberty of speech while we agree de re But I judge it perillous to give the same name to such an Assembly or Association as to a Church of Christs institution lest it seduce men to think that the word is not equivocally used If the Agents of several Kingdoms met at a common Dyet I had rather not call them a superiour Kingdom were their meeting never so necessary An Assembly that is the Pars Imperans of one body Politick having Legislative power is one thing and an Assembly of Agents or Princes for meer concord and strength and help of distinct Kingdoms Schools Armies c. is another thing And I know no proof that such Councils must be ordinary or at stated Times and places but sometimes that is best and sometime not as the case standeth as even the Papists confess And when they begin to degenerate from a Council for Concord to a Majesty or highest Governing power it 's time to cross their claim and interrupt the occasions of it § 10. And if men at such Classes and Councils choose one to keep order as a moderator yea if they fix him it is but the circumstantiating of the Assemblies work But if he will claim hereupon a distinct order office and proper political Church relation so as hence to make himself the Regent part of a species of a Church yea and claim this as of God and unalterable I cannot justifie such a Church-form § 11. This holds as to the Presidents of all ranks of Synods Classical Diocesan Metropolitical Provincial National or Patriarchal To use them as Presidents of Councils for Concord is one thing and to use them as the Pars Imperans or the constitutive heads of a distinct Church species is another Arch-Bishop Vsher told me himself his judgement that Councils were but for Counsel and Concord and not for the Government of each other or any of the members and that they had no proper Governing power either over their Minor part or over any absent Bishops Though each Bishop was still the Governour of his own flock and their power over their flocks was exercised with the greater advantage by their Concord in Councils Dyets and Councils of distinct independent Bishops are not distinct forms of policy or Churches § 12. And if this hold true that the Councils themselves are not thereby Rectors of a distinct political society but for Concord of many then it will follow that a President of such a Council whether Diocesan Provincial National or more General is not as such a
Rector of the Bishops under him and their people but only the Orderer or Guide of the Modes and Circumstances of the Council as such And therefore could the Pope prove a right to preside in General Councils orbis Romani vel orbis terrarum which he cannot it were no proof that he is Regent Head of the Church universal The same I may say of the other Presidents § 13. If it hold that God instituted only Congregational or Parochial Churches as for present Communion then it must needs follow that none of the rest instituted by man have power to deprive such single Churches of any of the Priviledges granted them by Christ And therefore whereas Christ hath made the terms of Catholick Communion himself and hath commanded all such to worship him publickly in holy Communion under faithful Pastors chosen or at least consented to by themselves which many hundred years was the judgement of the Churches no humane order or power can deprive them of any of this benefit nor disoblige them from any of this duty by just authority § 14. Nay seeing that the universal Church is certainly the highest species none hath authority on pretence of narrower Communion in lower Churches to change Christs terms of Catholick Communion nor to deprive Christians of the right of being loved and received by each other or disoblige them from the duty of loving and receiving each other Humane power made by their own contracts cannot change Christs Laws nor the Priviledges or forms of Christs own Churches § 15. They that say that these several Church species are of God must prove that God instituted them and that can be only by Scripture or else that he gave some power to institute them since Scripture times which till they prove none are bound to obey them at least when they over rule Christs own institutions § 16. To devise new species of Churches without Gods authority and impose them on the world yea in his name and call all dissenters schismaticks is a far worse Usurpation than to make and impose new Ceremonies or Liturgies § 17. Dr. Hammond Dissert cont Blond Annot in Act. 11. pass affirmeth that it cannot be proved that the order of subject Presbyters was existent in Scripture times and consequently holdeth that Bishops had but single Congregations as Ignatius speaketh with One Altar Now if Diocesans Metropolitans Provincials Patriarchs or Pope as constitutive of Church-species were made after either these new Churches were made by the Bishops of Parochial Churches or by those that were No Bishops or Pastors of any Churches at all For the Apostles were dead and no institution of these but Scriptural can be truly proved And other Churches besides the Catholick and Parochial or single distinct from a compound of Churches there were then none For the lower to make the higher Churches is that which they will not grant who grant not that Presbyters may propagate their own species and deny that power ascendeth ab inferioribus And that men of no Church made all these new Church species is no honour to them § 18. Two contrary opinions herein now reign One of the Papists that think Christ instituted the Pope with power to make inferiour Church species That other is that Christ or his Apostles instituted Diocesans giving them power both as rulers to make Parish Churches or Chapels under them and by Contract or Consent to make the highest species over them Provincial National Patriarchal and say some Papal But as to the Papists so much is said against their supposition that it 's not here to be confuted And it 's certain that single Church order was constituted by no Pope and that all the Apostles had power thereto And as for the latter which affirmeth the lower degrees to make the higher we still want the proofs of their authority so to do of which more afterwards § 19. As for them that say that it is Magistrates that have power to make new species of Churches I grant them that whatever alterations of Church-Orders may be made Magistrates may do much in them The Power of Princes and the Guidance of Pastors and the Consent of the people have each herein their special place But what these alterations or additions are which they may make is the chief question Both the Catholick Church and single Church assemblies being instituted by Christ are not left to them The circumstantiating of other Assemblies and Associations are left to them to be done according to Gods general Law But that making new Political Societies that are properly called Churches or Religious bodies consisting of the Pars regens pars subdita is left to them by Christ I never saw proved any more than the making of new Sacraments But if that could be proved yet that these humane Churches or their makers may change those that are of Divine institution or deprive them of their priviledges or forbid them commanded duty cannot be proved § 20. And it is certain 1. That if Princes or Bishops or the people did institute Diocesan or Metropolitan Provincial or Patriarchal Churches they may yet make more and other species And who knoweth how many new forms of Churches we may yet expect 2. And they that made them upon good reason may unmake them or alter them when they please § 21. But though the Legislator and not the Subjects be the institutor of the Vniversal and particular Church-policies yet men are the constitutive matter and mans consent and faith is the dispositio materiae without which the form is not received and mans welfare is part of the final cause and Ministers are the instruments and Gods word written and preached for the gathering of Churches by such qualification of the persons and also of revealing the Institution of Christ and investing of particular persons in their Church-relations § 22. By all this it appeareth that as it belongeth to Christ to institute the political species of Churches though circumstantiating may be left to man at least undoubtedly of the Vniversal and of the single species so it belongeth to Christ and not to man to institute and describe their terms of Union For this is the very institution of the species And we are not to receive humane Church-policies without good proof of mens authority to make them and impose them CHAP. XI The danger of the two extreams And first of despairing of any Concord and of unjust Tolerations § 1. SOme men having seen the Christian world so long in Sects and contending parties do think that there is no hope of Vnity and Concord and therefore that all should be left at liberty And others think that there is no hope but on terms so wide as shall take such as Christ receiveth not nor would have us receive And on such accounts there were very early great contentions about the qualifications of the baptizers and baptized and the validity of baptism and about re-baptizing As to the Baptizers some thought
that only Priests should baptize none appropriated it to Bishops some thought Lay-men might baptize in case of necessity and some thought that women also might do it And some thought that though women or Lay-men might not do it lawfully yet factum valet being done such should not be re-baptized And some thought that those that were baptized even by Priests that were Schismaticks or as they called them Hereticks when they separated from common Concord and Communion must be rebaptized And they thought that if they were baptized in such a Schismatical or Heretical society by whomsoever it was not into the true Church In this case Cyprian and the African Bishops with Firmilian and his Collegues were in the wrong when the Bishop of Rome was in the right And the Donatists thought they were but of Cyprians mind For it seems they had there the greater number of Bishops And the greater number went for the Church and the less for hereticks and so they called themselves the Church though out of Africa the number against them or that meddled not in the quarrel was far greater And all this arose but by the contests of two men for the Bishoprick of Carthage some following one and some the other § 2. This errour of Cyprian and the Donatists arose 1. from their not sufficiently distinguishing the Church universal from the Associated Churches of their Countrey nor well considering that Baptism as such is but our entrance into the universal Church and not into this or that particular Church 2. By an abusive or equivocal use of the name Heretick their doctrine being true of Hereticks strictly so called who deny in baptizing any essential part of Christianity but false of Hereticks laxly so called that are only Schismaticks or deny only or corrupt some lower doctrines precepts or practices of Religion § 3. Therefore the Council of Nice truly decided the case by distinction decreeing the re-baptizing of some as such as the Paulinists baptized and not of others That is All that had not true Christian baptism consisting of all the true essentials were to be re-baptized and not others whatever particular Church they were of § 4. Hereupon also among the Roman Doctors it hath been a great debate whether the Priests Intention was necessary to the validity of baptism The true answer to which is this It is one question what is necessary to the justifying of the Priest before the Church and another before God and another question what is necessary to the validity of baptism to the receiver before the Church and another before God And so I answer Supposing that no man shall suffer for anothers fault but for his own 1. If the Priest profess and Intention to baptize in general and express it in the true words of baptism his act ex parte sui is valid coram ecclesiâ though he dissemble 2. If the Priest dissemble his act is a crime and shall be punished by God 3. If he profess not to intend to baptize the person or to intend it in general but to corrupt it in the Essentials it is as a Ministration invalid coram Ecclesiâ and should be done again 4. If the adult person baptized profess baptismal Consent dissemblingly it is valid baptism coram ecclesiâ as to what the Church must do upon it but invalid as to what God is to do as the performer of the Covenant 5. If the person baptized do not so much as profess consent or profess not to consent nor to intend to be then baptized it is no baptism before God or the Church 6. If he profess to be baptized in general but deny any Essential in particular it is not the true Christian baptism but must be better done § 5. When any came in so great errour as that the Church scarce knew whether it was an Essential part of faith and baptism that was denyed it made the Controversie hard about their re-baptizing Many thought that the Photinians and Arians denying Christs Godhead as of the same substance with the father denyed an essential article and were to be re-baptized if they so entred at first Our Socinians are much worse that deny Christs Godhead in a fuller sence And how doth he believe in Christ that believeth him not to be God which is most eminently essential to him § 6. They that are over-bold in altering Christs terms of Church Union and Communion making them less or more or other if they knew what they do would find themselves more concerned in these controversies of baptizing and re-baptizing and consequently greater corrupters than they have thought § 7. To think that Church Vnion is impossible is to deny that there is any Church and consequently any Christ To think that necessary Concord in Communion is impossible is so great a disparagement to the Church as tempteth men by vilifying it to doubt of Christianity For if Christians cannot live in Unity of faith and love and converse what is their Christianity And such despair of Concord will make men suspend all endeavours to attain it For Despair useth no means § 8. And to take into the Church of Christ such as want the Essentials and Christ would not have received is to corrupt his Church and bring in Confusion and such as will dishonour him and will be more hurtful in the Church than they would be without like rebels in a Kingdom or mutineers in an Army or enemies in a Family The nearer the worse § 9. It is for this use especially that Christ hath committed the Church Keyes to the Pastors And the Key of entrance is the Chief Therefore he that judgeth who is to be Baptized exerciseth the chief act of the Church Keyes And he that Baptized was held to have the Power of judging whom to baptize which was never denyed to the Presbyters till after for order some restrained them § 10. It is a strange contrariety of some Pastors to themselves who judge that all Infants of Heathens Jews Turks or wicked men are without exception to be taken into the Church if any ignorant Christian will but offer them and say over a few words and the Adult also if they can but say over the Creed by rote and a few words more and thus fill the Church with Enemies of Christ and yet when they are in deny them Communion unless they will strictly come up to many humane unnecessary impositions as if far stricter obedience to men perhaps in usurpations were necessary than to Jesus Christ § 11. How far Infidels Catechumens or Heretical or Schismatical Assemblies may be tolerated in the world about us by Magistrates is not here to be enquired but hereafter But that the Churches themselves should not corrupt their own Communion by taking and keeping in uncapable persons the nature of the Church and discipline and its ends and the reproof of the Churches Rev. 2. 3. and the judgement of the Universal Church do tell us CHAP. XII The sin and danger of
making too much necessary to Church Vnion and Communion § 1. ADdition to Christs terms are very perillous as well as diminution When men will deny either Church entrance or Communion to any that Christ would have received because they come not up to certain terms which they or such as they devise And though they think that Christ giveth them Power to do thus or that reason or necessity justifieth them their errour will not make them guiltless Imputing their errour to Christ untruly is no small aggravation of the sin § 2. Nor is it a small fault to usurp a power proper to Christ to make themselves Law givers to his Church without any authority given them by him Their Ministry is another work § 3. And it is dangerous Pride to think themselves Great enough Wise enough and Good enough to come after Christ and to amend his work and do it better than he hath done § 4. Much less when they hereby imply an accusation against him and his institutions as if he had not done it well but they must amend it or all will be intolerable § 5. And indeed Mans work will be like man weak and faulty and full of flaws when Gods work will be like God the effect of Alsufficience power wisdom and Love § 6. And the merciful Lord and Saviour of the Church that came to take off heavy burdens and intolerable yokes will not take it well to have men come after him and as by his authority to make his easie yoke more strait and his light burden heavy and to cast or keep out those that he hath Redeemed and doth receive and to deal cruelly with those that he hath so dearly bought and tenderly loveth § 7. And indeed it is ofter for mens own interest and dominion to keep up their power and honour of superiority that men thus use the servants of Christ than truly to keep clear the Church and to keep out the polluters § 8. But when it is done by too much strictness and as for Church-purity yet this also hath its aggravations For men so far to forget themselves that they are servants and not Lords sinners that have need themselves of mercy unfit to be too forward to cast the first stone to seem more wise and holy than Christ is but specious offending him § 9. And as spiritual priviledges excel temporal so is it an aggravated Tyranny to deprive Christs servants of benefits so precious and so dearly bought As it was not with Silver and Gold that we were Redeemed so neither for the enjoying of Silver and Gold Communion with Christ his body and blood and his Saints in his Ordinances is a blessing so great that he that robs such of it that have right to it may answer it dearlier than if he had rob'd them of their purses O what then hath the Roman Usurper done that hath oft interdicted whole Kingdoms of Christians the use of holy priviledges and duties § 10. Little do many men that cry up faith and Orthodoxness and Catholicism and obedience and cry down Heresie Schism Errour and Disobedience believe how much guilt lyeth on their souls and without Repentance how terrible it will prove to be charged with the cruelties which they have used to good Christians in reproaching them and casting them out of the Church and destroying them as Hereticks and Schismaticks that should have been loved and honoured as Saints But some men cannot see by the light of the fire till they come so near it as to be burned § 11. These self-made or over-doing terms of Church-Union and Concord will prove the certainest Engines of Schism And none are so heinous Schismaticks as they that make unnecessary terms of Union and then call all Schismaticks that consent not to them For 1. these are the Leaders of the disorder when other sort of Schismaticks usually are but followers 2. These do it by Law which is of most extensive mischief even to all that are subject to them when others do it but by local practice extending but to those that are about them or the particular assemblies which they gather 3. These make the Schism unavoidable when private Seducers may be resisted For it is not in the power of good men to bring their judgements to the sentiments of every or any dictator or yet to go contrary to their judgements Ilicitum stat pro impossibili 4. These aggravate the crime by pretending power from God and fathering Schism on so good a thing as Government and causing it as for Unity it self 5. They condemn themselves by crying down Schism while they unavoidably cause it § 12. And this over-doing and making unnecessary termes unavoidably involveth them in the guilt of persecution and when they have begun it they know not where to stop Suppose they decree that none shall preach the Gospel or assemble for holy Communion in publick Worship but those that subscribe or swear or promise or profess or do somewhat accounted sinful by the persons commanded and not necessary indeed however esteemed by the imposer who yet perhaps calls it but Indifferent It is certain that no honest Christian will do that which he judgeth to be sin It is certain that other mens confident talk will not make all men of their minds to take all for lawful which they take for such what then will the Imposers do They will make strict Laws to punish severely all that disobey For say they Our commands must not be contemned nor disobedience tolerated so do the Papists as to the Trent Oath c. so did Charles the fifth a while about the Interim and so many others These Laws then must be executed The Pastors must be cast out the preachers silenced They still believe as Daniel did about praying and the Apostles about preaching that God commandeth what men forbid and it is a damnable sin to forsake their calling and duty no less than sacriledge and cruelty to souls and deserting the Church and worship and cause of Christ and the people will still believe that no mans prohibition can excuse them if they forsake Gods publick worship and comply with sin The Prelates will say that all this is but errour wilfulness and rebellion and they can prove the contrary Their words will not change the judgement of dissenters The Pastors and preachers then must be fined imprisoned or banished for preaching and the people for publick worshipping God when they are fined they will go on when they are out of prison they will return to their work nothing is left then to remedy it but either perpetual imprisonment banishment or death When this is done more will still rise of the same mind and continue the work that others were disabled to perform And the Prelates that cause this will be taken by the suffering people for thorns and thistles and grievous Wolves that devour the flocks and the military Ministers of the Devil The indifferent common people knowing their Neighbours to
be conscionable men of upright lives will become of the same minds and look on the persecutors as the enemies of good men and of publick peace that do all this by pride and domination The ungodly rabble of drunkards prophane swearers adulterers and such like for the most part hating Godliness and strict living will cry up the Prelates and triumph over the sufferers And thus the Land will be divided the Prelates and other prosecutors with the dirty malignant rabble of the licentious will make one party and these will call themselves Orthodox and the Church The sufferers and all that pity them and like them better than the Persecutors will be the other party The conjunction of the debauched and malignant rabble with the Prelates and their party will increase sober mens disaffection to them and make men take them for the patrons of impiety And how sad a condition must such Churches be in To say nothing of the state concussions and diseases that usually follow Whatever ignorant men may dream these prognosticks are most certain as any man that can discern effects in moral causes may see and as history and sad experience prove to all men of reading observation and understanding § 13. And in Pastors of the Church this will be a double crime and shame because 1. It is their office to gather and edifie Christs flock and not to scatter and afflict them 2. Because they should most imitate Christ in tender bowels gentleness and long-suffering bearing the Lambs in their armes and not breaking the bruised reed nor quenching the smoaking flax Nurses or Mothers use not to kill their Children for crying nor to turn them out of doors because they are unclean nor to cut their throats to make them swallow bigger morsels instead of cutting their meat Much less to cast them off for obeying their father 3. Because it is supposed that they best know the will of Christ and should be best acquainted with the wayes of peace And therefore should understand Rom. 14. 15. Him that is weak in the faith Receive but not to doubtful disputations The Kingdom of God is not meats and drinks but righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost And he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men that is of wise and good men but not of proud persecutors Rom. 14. 17 18. Wherefore receive ye one another as Christ also received to the Glory of God Rom. 15. 7. If the people were Schismatical and inclined to fall in pieces the Guides and builders should soder and cement them and as pillars and bases in the Church which is the house of the living God as Timothy is called should bear them up that they fall not by division § 14. In a word whoever will impartially read Church History especially of the Councils and Popes shall find that the self-conceited Usurpation of proud Prelates imposing unnecessary devices of their own professions or practices on the Churches and this with proud and fierce impatience toward dissenters and usurping a Legislation which Christ never gave them hath been the great cause of much of the hatred schisms persecutions wars rebellions against Emperours and Kings false excommunications interdicts and the disgrace of Christistianity weakning of the Church and hindering the Conversion of Jews and Infidels and been a chief Granado Thunderbolt or Wild-fire by which Satan much prospered in storming of the Church CHAP. XIII To cry out of the intolerable mischiefs of Toleration and call for sharper execution while dividing snares are made the terms of Vnion is the work of ignorant proud and malignant Church-destroyers § 1. TO tolerate all evil that pretendeth Religion is to be no friend to Religion Government or peace To tolerate no error in Religion is for no Prince to tolerate himself his wife his child or any one subject And to pretend to this is to crave self-destruction neque enim lex justior ulla est c. and to proclaim himself ignorant yea grosly ignorant what is a Church a Pastor a Government a Christian or a Man § 2. Multitudes of Books are written for and against Toleration They that are lowest usually write for it Even Jer. Taylor 's Liberty of Prophecying before he was a Bishop was thought a commendable or tolerable Book But most are against it that are in power and think they can force others to their wills But it is wise and just and impartial men that are here the discerners of the truth whose judgements are not biassed by interest or passion nor blinded by unacquaintedness with their adversaries or their cause or perverted by using only one ear and one eye He knoweth not mankind who knoweth not how greatly not only the common gang but even learned men yea and zealous religious men are to be suspected in their evil characters and reports of those that they are speaking against as adversaries It grieveth me to know and think how little most adversaries in this case are to be believed § 3. To describe the due bounds of Toleration is far from being impossible or very difficult to an understanding and impartial man But to stop the mouth or rage of Contradicters and to reconcile the multitude of ignorant proud tyrannical uncharitable interessed factious partial men to such certain measures is next impossible and never yet even among the Clergy was attained since the Spirit of infallibility simplicity and Love departed and the Spirit of darkness pride and malignity in most places got the upper hand § 4. Many and many Books of this nature I have lately read that cry down liberty and Toleration and call for greater severities and describe those whose ruine or sufferings they plead for as ignorantly and falsly as if they talkt of men at the Antipodes whom they had never seen and as if they had never heard their Cause and as cruelly as if they had been preaching to Souldiers and confuting John Baptist or preaching a Visitation Sermon to Bonner or Gardiner And yet the falshoods or injuries set off with so great confidence and well composed words and zeal against schism and error and especially for the Church and Government that it grieveth my soul to think how difficult such men do make it to strangers that must know all on trust from others and men of other business that cannot have while to search into the truth to escape deceit and the consequent mischiefs Zeal for piety is not more abused by Sectaries than zeal for themselves and their power and wealth called zeal for the Church and truth and order is abused by bad domineering men Or else the world had not been embroiled by the Clergy these twelve hundred years at least nor Rome arrived at its pernicious Greatness and power to destroy § 5. And let mens different Religions or Opinions be never so many and notable yet every where the same plea against Toleration is used and the same Arguments seem good for every
must be so And if they are as usually bad as Christ and his Apostles tell us then bad men will rule And operari sequitur esse As men are they will do Great men will have worldly selfish interests clean contrary to the interest of Christ and his doctrine And how great influence Rulers have as to concord or division is easily known 5. And hitherto the Pastors of the Churches have been alas such as Gregory Nazianzen Isidore Pelusiota and many others have described to say nothing of Gildas or Salvian or the sad Characters that most parties give of one another and the accusations that Afflicters bring against those whom they afflict and which the sufferers give of them If Paul then must say All seek their own and not the things that are Jesus Christs no wonder if it be so now and that even General Councils have sadly anathematized one another and thousands of Bishops or Pastors have been cursed from Christ by the rest And how much power proud turbulent ignorant and worldly Pastors have to hinder the Churches Concord hath been found by too long and sad experience 6. And mans nature is sensual and slothful and it will cost so dear by long and hard study to be wise indeed and by mortification and self-denyal to be truly good that few are likely to attain it 7. And education company friends and false writers and teachers will still cherish faction and discord in the world 8. And distance and disacquaintance will leave open mens ears to back-biters slanderers and false reports Men will think it uncharitable not to believe such e. g. as Learned Historians Doctors and their Pastors are 9. And the wars and cross-interests of Princes and States have hitherto by jealousies fomented divisions in the Church 10. And the false wayes and termes of Concord will be kept up in opposition to the true and will not be the least impediment 11. And Lastly Even the Wise and Good that must be the Peace-makers are such but in part and have in them too much of the folly errour and sin of others which will hinder their work yea and make them also troublers of themselves and others § 6. These being not doubtful conjectures but certain Prognosticks the remedy must be suited to the Patients capacity And I. Necessary Essentials all Christians are and must be agreed in But unnecessary things such as I have described are never like to be commonly united in nor is it necessary that they should It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to the Apostles to impose nothing on the Church but Necessary things Act. 15. It was the deceivers and false Teachers which would have done otherwise Against whom St. Paul doth copiously and zealously dispute in his Epistles to the Romans Corinthians Galatians Colossians c. To pretend that as necessary which is not so or to command that as necessary and causelesly to make it necessary which is not so in it self and which we may easily know will never be so judged of nor received by all is but to rack and tear the Church and do mischief for an unnecessary thing § 7. II. As it is certain that nothing but Truth can be fit matter for the Churches Concord so it must be certain Truth that is not only such as whoever believeth is not deceived but such as may be discerned by ascertaining Evidence by all sober willing Christians Not only such as the Learned may be sure of but all that must take it as certain in their profession For no man must make a false profession and say he is certain when he is not Not that all that may be called certainty must needs exclude all doubting but that the Assent be prevalent against such doubting Nor do I mean that it must be certain by natural evidence It is enough if it be so by Divine Revelation And if any be so weak that they perceive not some necessary revealed truth to be certainly so revealed they must be put on no more than to say I do though not with certainty believe it And no probability must be imposed on mens profession when there is notable danger on the contrary side if they should mistake § 8. III. Therefore the terms of Union must be only things plain and intelligible to all sober willing minds For all persons of dull wits and diverting business cannot attain such certainty or firm belief of things which they cannot understâ—nd Belief without understanding is but a dead notion or name or rather a contradiction § 9. As for the Popish doctrine of Implicite faith it is no true belief of any thing but that General verity in which they say the particulars are implicitely contained We must all believe implicitely in God that is That whatever God revealeth is true But he that believeth no more but this is falsly said to believe other things For he may believe this who never understood that God revealed any thing in particular He that never heard of Christ or the resurrection may believe that all Gods revelations are true But to call this an Implicite belief of Christ and the Resurrection is but to equivocate and call that believing a thing which is no believing of it If they hold that to believe that the Church that is the Pope and his Councils is infallible in acquainting us with matter of faith is all that is necessary to salvation though they know not what the particulars are let them say so plainly and not call this a believing of other things or a believing in Jesus Christ or his Gospel § 10. IV. And it is only things of Divine Authority that can be the necessary terms of universal Unity or Concord supposing the necessary media of bringing them to mens notice Had we lived in the time and place where Christ and his Apostles did preach and work their Miracles it had been one thing to determine what were then preached as the necessary articles of faith and another thing how we come to hear know and understand them It must have been by our ears eyes and intellects that we knew and perceived what was said and done And so now standing at the distance of many ages certain history or tradition must bring that to our notice which our eyes and ears would then have brought to it But still the Law and terms of Vnion are no less Divine whatever means do help us to understand them And as for them that will make humane terms seem necessary to Catholick Vnion or Communion that they deceive themselves and others and shall never attain the end but tear the Church by such ill engines is easily thus proved § 11. The Catholick Church never did or will agree what humane power it is to whom this work belongeth whether it be a Pope or Council or some universal Monarch or a Council of Princes by agreement Never such a thing was or will be Popes and Councils were but in one Empire the chief Ecclesiastical
voluntarily came or were duly brought 2. And if men will stay without or keep their Children out they wrong themselves and theirs but this breaketh no unity of the Christian Church § 8. There have been also factious persons that tye the validity of Baptism to their sects such as were specially the Donatists supposing that their Prelates had the truest call and power and that all others were Sectaries or Hereticks and therefore their baptism null and void and to be iterated But though in other arrogancies some follow them to this day yet few if any in the nulling of baptism § 9. But a greater and longer stir there hath been about Creeds and professions required as Tests to excuse men from heresie But yet it is to be noted that few of them by these altered the form of baptism but there took up with the ancient Creed the Apostles and the Nicene or Constantinopolitane and required no more but only imposed the rest on Bishops Priests or other afterwards § 10. And is there now any cause of discord here 1. All Christians have been made such by baptism from the Apostles dayes till now Is there any thing in the world that ever came down to us by more certain uniform consenting tradition The very same words of baptism which Christ did institute are every where used to this day And if all ages and Countreys have still baptized persons as believers or Christians and yet be not agreed what Christianity is or what the faith is that baptism requireth it will be a strange incredible shame to them But even Hierome and Hillary that cry out of their new Creeds do tell us that in Baptism the old one was still used to which they did appeal And though the Greeks and Latines differ about their filióque and some small new clauses are found in the Creed that were not in the old Copies which are now found on Record they are not so factious or vain as to nullifie Baptism by any of those differences For the Creed is but part of the Exposition of Baptism and Baptism is true Baptism if no other Creed or words were used but it self 2. And there are few Christians yet that will refuse any of the truly ancient Creeds of which more anon § 11. 3. It is true that there are some humane ceremonies which some Churches adjoin to Baptism and by others are rejected or omitted The most of the ancient Churches used the tasting of milk and honey the wearing of a white garment and Chrisme and now some use the transient Image of the Cross as a symbol of our engagement to a Crucified Christ which others omit as taking it to be so far participant of the nature of a Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace as that it is an usurpation of Christs prerogative for any men without his institution to appoint But yet all these Churches that differ in these Ceremonies agree that the validity of Baptism dependeth not on them Whether they be used or omitted the person is nevertheless baptized § 12. Qu. But what is it that is necessary to the being and validity of baptism Answ This was partly answered before 1. It is necessary to the validity of it in foro Ecclesiae that both the baptizer and the adult baptized or the person that is authorized to Covenant for the infant do Profess to intend real Baptism and not to do it in jeast or to other ends And it is necessary to its efficacy to pardon and salvation that this profession of the Baptized be sincere and that he do it from the heart And it is necessary to free the baptizer from Gods displeasure that his intention be sincere 2. It is necessary that the words of Baptism be such as express all the Essence of it such as are those of Christ which all Christians use I Baptize thee in the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost And that no contradictory words which nullifie these be added 3. It is necessary to the validity of it in the judgement of the Church that the adult person and the Parent or pro-parent for the Infant do seem or profess to understand all the words of Baptism so far as is essential to it For ignorantis non est consensus 4. It is necessary to the validity of it to real pardon and salvation that he not only seem to understand it but really do so 5. It is accordingly necessary that the person consent to all the essence of the Covenant that is seem and profess to do it to the Church and really do it to satisfie God and obtain pardon and life by it 6. It is not absolutely necessary to the validity that the Creed or any other profession be used by the baptized besides the words themselves I believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and give up my self to him in this Baptismal Covenant Because understanding and consent may be expressed by those words 7. But it is usually necessary to the bene esse or the best performance of baptism that the adult person or the Parent of Infants do in larger words profess his understanding belief and consent to baptism And it is best that these words be not too many nor too few and that they be for the most part one unchanged form Lest ignorance or heresie deprave baptism by change and variety of words 8. To this end the Churches of Christ have still used the Creed as the summary form of Profession of faith As the Lords Prayer is a summary form of our Desires and the Decalogue of our rule and profession of practice But because Assent is supposed to imply Consent to the particulars Assented to though but Generally professed therefore the Church hath more rarely omitted the Creed in the profession of Assent when yet they have accepted of a more General profession of Consent to the Covenant and promise of obedience 9. But if the adult do before-hand as a Catechumen learn the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue and give the Pastor a satisfactory account of his competent understanding of them then that may be supposed and only a General profession of faith consent and subjection be used at the time and in the words of baptism And so much of the constitutive causes of baptism § 13. II. Though no more than Baptism be essentially Necessary because so great a work should be well done and ignorance and errour are very common it is meet that the Church require an understanding Assent to the common Articles of the Creed and an understanding Consent to the Lords Prayer and Decalogue and in general to all that he understandeth to be Gods Word Belief and sincere Obedience And therefore that the adult person and Parent of the Infant be one that hath before been Catechized or examined herein § 14. Though I consent to Ger. Vossius and others that there is no proof at all that the twelve Apostles made the twelve Articles of the
performance-sake to engage us to do what we promise 2. And as a known false Covenant is null as to the benefit of the Covenanter though not as to his obligation so at the entrance a mans word is his credible profession but if he by notorious wilfulness violate this word or promise in any essential point he then so far nullifieth his verbal profession as to his benefit and proveth his Covenanting to be false And therefore all disciplined Churches do cast out gross impenitent violaters of that Covenant in such essential parts § 2. But what is such violation and for what fin men are to be cast out is a difficult question in some instances 1. I take it for a sure rule that no man is to be further cut off from the universal Church by sentence than he first morally departeth or cuts off himself For the Pastors have not their power for destruction but for edification And their office is subservient to Christ who came not to destroy mens lives but to save them even to seek and to save the lost They are not to be hurtful but helpful to mens souls § 3. 2. He therefore that apostatizeth or denyeth any one essential article of Christianity cuts off himself first and is to be declared by the Churches sentence to have so done if he repent not If he timely repent it must prevent the sentence § 4. 3. Whatever sin amounteth to an evident refusal of promised subjection to Jesus Christ cuts off the sinner morally from Christ and if he prevent it not by repentance he is to be sentenced accordingly by the Church who do but thus declare who depart from Christ and cut off themselves § 5. 4. Every sin is not a renouncing of our allegiance or subjection to Christ nor to be censured by excommunication 1. There are sins of meer infirmity or imperfection in duty as imperfection of sincere faith love hope obedience prayer c. 2. There are sins of sudden passion and surprize which the will habitually abhorreth and the sinner quickly repenteth of 3. There are sins of ignorance which a man knew not to be sins 4. There are sins of meer forgetfulness 5. Yea it is not all presumptuous sin that is a renouncing of our subjection A faithful man knoweth that the least sin should be avoided and he may know that vain jesting or idle words are a sin And he may be often guilty of these by some degree of presumption that is he may be tempted to think that all men being sinners such a sin may stand with grace and for want of due excitation not fear it or fly from it because it is a little one as he would do from perjury murder or some greater sin No small evils or danger doth so much suscitate the soul to resist and avoid it as a greater doth no man is so careful to avoid the prick of a pin as of a sword This want of suscitation through the smallness of the thing maketh less resistance and so some degree of presumption in all men § 6. 5. No one Act of sin sufficiently repented of is matter for a just excommunication be the sin never so great For the penitent are pardoned If the Repentance be before the excommunication it preventeth it For the first part of discipline is to perswade the sinner to repentance as being intended for his recovery and salvation and excommunication is never just but when the sinner will not repent As under the Law of Innocency death was the wages of any sin but under the Gospel faith and repentance are the remedying conditions so accordingly though Adam was cast out of Paradise for the first sin none are to be cast out of the Church for any sin meerly as a sin but as not repented of by a believer I say not that this is the Magistrates rule in punishing the body but the Pastors in excommunicating § 7. 6. Yea the time and means of admonition for bringing the sinner to repentance must be competent and such as are suitable to a rational hope of his repenting and not as some Lay Chancellors do if a few rough words make them not repent presently excommunicate him nor pro forma to say thrice I admonish you I admonish you I admonish you and then I excommunicate you It is not a jeasting matter nor to be past as hastily as angry word The sinner must be gravely and seriously told of the evil of his sin and if it be something which he taketh for no sin he must be convinced by Scripture proof and must be heard speak for himself with patience and if he hear not a more private admonition he must be reproved before the Church that many may consent for the more authoritative conviction and for the warning of others and that the Church may thereby clear themselves as not consenting to the sin 1 Cor. 5. And the excommunication is only to pass at last when repentance justly seemeth hopeless § 7. But yet there is much difference herein to be made in respect of the difference of sins and of persons 1. A sin of errour or ignorance or controverted as also a smaller sin requireth a longer time of patience for the sinners conviction before he be judged to be impenitent But a notorious sin against the light of nature or plainest proof and of most scandalous consequence must have shorter time of patience yet so much as that the sinners passion may be over and he may have leisure well to consider of the evil and of the Churches reproof § 8. As gravity convincing reason compassion and patience are certainly necessary so it seemeth very convenient at least that when the sinner is admonished before the Church the Congregation joyn with the Pastor in earnest Prayer to God for his conviction and repentance and if that prevail not at once in tolerable cases to do it again before the sinner be cast out Ye ought to mourn saith St. Paul 1 Cor. 5. Men will not cut off a corrupt member of the body hastily nor till flat necessity nor without sense of pain § 9. It is not every sin that a man repenteth not of that is a just cause of excommunication For there is no man living that hath not some sins which he no otherwise repenteth of than as in general he hateth all sin so far as he knoweth it For every man hath sins of ignorance and every man hath some degree of errour and some faithful men have more than others and take some sins to be duties or no sins and some have darker minds than others that are hardly convinced and cannot perceive the force of an argument against the prejudice before received And some are educated where some sins are praised and converse with such persons as by their parts and interest in them harden them in their errour How many thousand zealous Papists Nestorians Eutychians Greeks take others for hereticks by mistake and perhaps by words and actions wrong or
to sentence or declare him none For the sentence must be true Many things in such cases may cause a man to err which do not unchristen him or cut him off from Christ § 42. The disowning and refusing some humane forms of Profession of faith called Creeds or some doubtful though lawful subscriptions promises declarations Covenants or oaths much less false ones are no just causes of Excommunicating that man who professeth all the essentials of Christianity and whatever is necessary to salvation § 43. The condemning of some such humane Creeds Articles Forms Covenants promises or oaths though unjustly is no just cause of such excommunication because all men being known to be fallible a good Christian may mistake another mans or many mens words And the misunderstanding of a man or many men may stand with Christianity piety and salvation § 44. It is not all that maketh a man uncapable of local Communion with this or that particular Church which unchristeneth him or maketh him uncapable of continuing in the Church-universal as shall be after proved § 45. Nay a man may be a Christian in the Universal Church who is a member of no particular Church as is before shewed As 1. some newly Baptized as the Eunuch Act. 8. 2. Some Christians that live among Infidels where is no Pastor or Church As if one were now Converted in any Heathen Land or cast there after or called as an Embassador or Merchant to live there 3. Some poor vagrant persons that have no dwelling as Pedlars Tinkers and such others that go from place to place and some others § 46. Therefore if a man should so far err as to think that he were not bound to be a member of some particular Church it may consist with his being a member of the Universal Church § 47. Some few brethren called Independents think that none are members of the Church-Universal but those that are members of some particular Church But it is but few of them and they are mistaken As Corporations are the most regular parts of the Kingdom but not the whole Kingdom so particular Churches are the most regular parts of the universal Church but not the whole as hath been proved by instances § 48. Yea though we need lay no stress on this I doubt not but in cases of necessity an open profession of Christianity and entring into the Covenant of God doth make a man a Christian even without baptism it self As if a Bible or good book or speech convert a man among Infidels where there is no one to baptize him St. Peter saith It is not the outward washing that saveth but the answer of a good Conscience to God in the holy Covenant And it is a dishonourable doctrine against God and Christianity to say that God layeth his love and mans salvation so much on a Ceremony as to damn or deny an upright holy soul for want of it or to give grace to none but by that Ceremony though it be of Gods institution I am sure St. Paul saith Else were your Children unclean but now are they holy 1 Cor. 7. 14. And if Holy before baptism because the Parents are so and do devote them to God and God accepts them then baptism doth but solemnize this dedication and invest them It is the solemn Covenanting with God that is the chief part of baptism and is it which the ancient Churches meant when they pleaded for the necessity of baptism to salvation Though it is no doubt a duty where it may be had and the thing signified is necessary to salvation § 49. The Keyes of Admission and exclusion as to the Church universal and salvation are not given absolutely to the Pastors but only to exercise on qualified persons And every man herein hath more power as to his own entrance or ejection than the Pastors have They do but judge a man to be what he is according to Christs Law and not what he is not no man can make a man a Christian without himself nor unchristian him without himself nor can all men and devils do so much to it as himself God hath not put our salvation or damnation so much in any ones power as our own § 50. A false and unjust sentence of excommunication doth no more to damn a man than a false absolution doth to save him But till the falshood is known others for order sake must avoid the person if it be done by a just power and not notoriously abused to the subversion of order or the Church otherwise not But the injured person is still a member of the Catholick Church And is not disobliged from his Communion with it and publick worshipping of God because a Pastor unjustly forbiddeth him Though he must give all due satisfaction and seek his right in a regular way CHAP. V. III. What are the terms necessary to the Office and Exercise of the Sacred Ministry § 1. THe Schisms in the Church are far more among the Clergy than the people and have been mostly exercised by Bishops militating against each other and anathematizing each other as hereticks or as not submitting to the challengers of superiour jurisdiction Or else in the Bishops silencing Christs Ministers for not obeying them as they expect HARD WORDS for want of an equal skill in speaking and JURISDICTION or superiority through pride and a carnal mind contended for by the Clergy against each other have torn the Church and confounded States and been the shame of Christianity in the eyes of Infidels and brought us to the low and broken state that we are in § 2. The great cause of all this hath been the introduction of ignorant or bad men into the sacred Pastoral Office And the remedy doth not yet seem very hopeful to us And operari sequitur esse As the man is so will he do A good tree will bring forth good fruit and è contra An ignorant man will err An erring man will do evil and not repent none will do more mischief against the Churches peace than an erring Ruler that Can do it and thinketh that he Ought to do it worldly men will prefer their worldly interest before the interest of Christianity and mens souls The carnal mind is not subject to the Law of God nor while such can be But the Proud while they will not obey God will rage against the best that obey not them Read Church-History and you 'll see it proved § 3. Such as the choosers are such ordinarily the chosen are like to be God and the ancient Churches set three locks to this door for the safety of the Church that so great a matter should not be disposed of without a manifold consent 1. The person to be Ordained and the Ordainers were made the Judges who should be a Minister of Christ in the Church-Universal as being qualified by God thereto II. The People and the Ordainers were to choose or consent who should be their Pastors in particular The people and the
Presbyters chose the Bishop and the Bishop and people consenting chose the Presbyters III. The Magistrate was judge whom he would countenance or tolerate But Gods Law was the Rule which all these were to observe in judging § †But all men are corrupt and some more than others And they like those best that are likest themselves or at least most agreeable to their interest and desires This chain hath been long broken sometimes the Bishop of Rome hath claimed the choice of Bishops and given the Bishops the choice of the Presbyters sometime he hath given the people the choice of their Bishops but claimed to himself the power of investing and instituting them Sometime Emperours and Kings have used this investing power leaving still the people to choose In England now the King really chooseth all Bishops commending them to the Dean and Chapter pro formâ And the Bishop only chooseth whom he will ordain a Minister in specie And one called the Patron chooseth who shall be the Parish Priest and the Bishop must institute and induct him but according to the Law and the choosing and consenting liberty is wholly taken from the people § 5. 1. How the Popes formerly chose and yet choose where it is in their power I need not tell them that know history and the world nor yet what Presbyters such Bishops chose nor is it any wonder that such choosers served their own interest nor that the chosen serve it 2. How Princes and Patrons and Prelates have chosen history tells us And Christ who saith How hard it is for the Rich to enter into the Kingdom of heaven teacheth us to expect that ordinarily Rich men should not be the best to speak softly And the Rich will rule and will choose according to their interests and their appetites 3. And when the people had their choice in some places they chose hereticks or ignorant men In other places they chose vitious men In most places they followed the Court or Great men whenever they interposed and too often divided from each other by disagreement or caused tumults in the choice And then what wonder if the sacred office was corrupted to the doleful detriment and danger of the Churches when the choosers were but such as these § 6. The things necessary to the sacred Ministry Bishops or Presbyters are I. Either to the Being II. Or to the Well-being III. Or to the Exercise § 7. I. To the Being are Necessary I. A true efficient cause II. The true constitutive causes III. A due Terminus or End § 8. I. The true efficient cause here is necessary to the effect it being the Fundamentum of the Relation And this is 1. Primary or Principal which is Jesus Christ the Lord Redeemer and the Churches King and Head 2. Instrumental and that is The Law of Christ which is as a Charter to the Church first telling the Choosers and receiver what to do and then Giving the Power and Imposing the Obligation on the person chosen consenting and ordained § 9. II. The necessary Constitutive Causes are I. Matter or the subject II. The necessary Disposition of that Matter III. The form as in Physical beings it is so so Relations have somewhat answerable § 10. I. The Subject or Matter is A Man II. The necessary Disposition is 1. That it be a Male and not a Woman 2. That he have the use of Reason or natural wit and speech 3. That he be a Christian 4. That he have necessary abilities for the essentials of the office-work And those are 1. The understanding at least of the Essentials of Religion and Ministry 2. A Will to perform the work of the Ministry 3. Ability of utterance to do it and all the necessary executive power § 11. III. The Form of the Office is 1. In general AUTHORITY and OBLIGATION conjunct 2. In special Authority to perform the Office-work and obligation to perform it Which work is 1. To be a Teacher under Christ the chief Teacher 2. To be a Priest or Intercessor to guide the Church in worship and speak in their name and on their behalf to God and intercede for them and as from God to administer his Seals or Sacraments 3. To Rule the Church and particular Believers in things spiritual not by force or sword but by opening and directive applying Gods Word and exercising the Church Keyes as Judges who is to be received or cast out loosed or bound according to the Word of God The Form consisteth of these parts § 12. III. The End or Terminus of the Sacred Office that is of the Authority and Obligation is 1. Proximately the Work to be done 2. the necessary objects of that work 1. Particular persons 1. Infidels and ungodly men to be converted 2. Christians and godly men to be edified 2. Societies 1. The Churchâ—Universal to be increased and edified 2. Particular Churches to be taught and guided and led in worship and discipline 3. The necessary effects here named to be intended All that I have named and no more is necessary to the Being § 13. About all these there are divers errours brought in by the arrogance and ignorance of men which hinder the concord and peace of Christians And I. About the Efficient Cause Too many falsly perswade the world that the ORDAINERS are the efficient Causes of the Power or Office yea that their Intention can alter the species instituted by Christ in the conveyance of it to this or that person As if when Christ and his Apostles have described the office in its parts and commanded that a Bishop or Presbyter be chosen and ordained to such particular work and ends an Ordainer might now give him half this power without the rest And when he maketh Bishops or Presbyters they shall have no more power than the Ordainer was willing or intended or did particularly express Than which nothing is more false For it is Gods Law that is the specifier and donation and the Ordainer doth but ministerially invest and deliver possession of what the Law gave and commanded him to deliver The Kings Law or Charter giveth power to the Citizens to choose a Major and describeth all his power and work and ordereth the Recorder to Swear him and deliver him the insignia Here now 1. The Electors do but determine of the person to receive the power but do not at all give it 2. The King by his Charter as the instrument giveth it It results hence as every Jus à titulo seu fundamento juris 3. The Recorder only Ministerially delivereth possession by investiture Now if the Recorder or Choosers shall say We choose you or deliver you power as Major according to the Kings Charter but you shall have but so much less than the Charter giveth this diminution is a nullity For they have no power to choose another kind of Major than that described in the Charter nor to make his power more or less but he may exercise what the Charter
office Now what is necessary to the well being And indeed though the Essential Unity of the Church lye not upon this yet the Peace and Concord of it doth and that so much as that no other means without this will attain it And the want of what is necessary ad bene esse in the Ministry and Bishops is it that hath caused the common calamities § 35. And I. Nothing is more wanting hereto than better qualifications in the persons 1. That there be a strong wit and good acquired gifts of knowledge and a strong and lively faith from Divine illumination and good acquaintance with the Oracles of God A Pastor or Teacher should not only know the essentials of Christianity which every Christian knoweth but also the Integrals and many Accidents And both essentials and integrals should be known by him by a more clear distinct and orderly understanding not only above the vulgus sâ—delium common Christians but above the better sort of the flock And some store of natural and common knowledge called Learning is needful hereunto But especially more illumination faith and holy wisdom and skilfulness in matter sencâ— and method of the word of God § 36. Where Gods Word is not by the Teacher clearly understood and firmly believed and he is not well acquainted with the work of his office it is not any formalities of Ordination consent or Titles that use to make up these defects as to the success To say what God can do is little to this business He can make an Ass to preach to Balaam He can work by fools and ignorant men and hereticks But Scripture and all the common experience of ages assureth us that it is not his ordinary way and that he rarely blesseth such with great success but worketh according to the qualifications of the Instrument and the Receivers And let a mans tiâ—les and ordination be what they will weak men will do weakly and ignorant men will do ignorantly and erring men will do erroneously and the Gospel will be wronged the people will be hurt or losers and enemies will deride and scorn § 37. When Aristotle saith that Wise men are by Nature to Rule and fools and ignorant persons to be ruled he meant not I suppose that this gave wise men formal Power but that this was the materiae dispositio receptiva as Gold and Silver are to be the Kings Coyn but are not so quâ talia so only wise Christians are receptive matter of Ministerial power and the wiser the better And when one appeareth to be of eminent wisdom above all the rest caeteris paribus the ordainers and people are directed and bound by God to choose that man And what scruples soever rise about his Ordination usually God worketh by excellent worthy men and as light cannot be hid so holy wisdom will be known and valued § 38. 2. But LOVE or HOLINESS is necessary ad bene esse as well as wisdom Heat causeth heat And we have need of sacred Heat as well as of Light Love kindleth love A Pastor should excel the Flock in Love to God to Christ to Holiness to Gods word and work and to all the peoples souls and should speak all from the Zeal of Love As the Nurses milk should have the warmth of Nature Cold heartless preachers usually reach not the heart and have but coldâ— and small success Here also God worketh usually according to the means And how can he be taken for a sound Believer of so great over-whelming things as we have to speak of that speaketh only of them sleepily and coldly § 39. 3. And as wisdom and zealous Love so executive Activity but especially Taking utterance is necessary to the well-being of the sacred-office and the success Though it be not the tricks of vain humane art and affectation which must do our work yet is it a free and moving utterance of holy wisdom faith and Love And words are not all Holy example of living in blamelesness justice humility self-denyal meekness and patience must be our work And diligence in doing all the good we can What examples are there this day among us of one or two holy humble meek and patient and unwearied labourers even in a silenced suffering and low condition men of no extraordinary parts but with ordinary parts of extraordinary labour and patience that whole Countreys have cause to bless God for I will venture to name three such 1. Mr. John Eliots in New England that hath translated all the Bible into that most barbarous language preached to the Indians about forty years and gathered divers Churches among them And verily I would the Jesuites had never done worse work than what they did with several Fryars in Congo China Japan c. which is their greatest honour 2. Mr. John Dury I hear yet living who hath these fifty years or near been employed in reconciling the Lutheran and Calvinist Protestants not without success as Helmstadt Breme Hassia and other places know Though much more might have been expected if the wars of Princes and the obstinacy of contentious Divines had not hindred 3. Our Mr. Thomas Gouge an ejected silenced Minister who hath set up about fourscore Schools in Wales for thousands of Scholars given away many thousand books to them relieved many poor honest ejected Ministers got the Bible the Practice of Piety the Whole Duty of Man printed in Welsh and visiteth the Counties there though aged once a year Gods work must be done as our trade and business and not on the by as taking up the place and time which mens fleshly and worldly interest and work can spare Had the Church such men enow as I have described and as some have been such as Cyprian Nazianzene Basil Chrysostom Atticus Proclus Hierom Augustine Ambrose Martin Salvian c. and such as Melancthon Bucholtzer Bucer Phagius Musculus Martyr Calvin Beza Vrsine Olevian Paraeus Camero Placeus Molineus Dallaeus Blondel Chamier Sadeel Le Blank c. and such as we have had many in England Jewel Grindal Field Reignolds Vsher Morton Hall Davenant Chillingworth Hildersham Dod Ball Bradshaw Gataker c. and such as yet through Gods great mercy we have many I say had the world enow such as these the light would scatter the dismal darkness and they would carry on Christs interest in the Churches against the opposition of Usurpers hereticks and contenders For even a few such have broke through armies of Philistines to fetch men the sacred waters of life And it is not scruples and quarrels about their ordinations or such like as would frustrate their endeavours § 40. II. It is greatly needful to the well-being of the Ministry and the success that Doctrine be kept sound And therefore 1. That the Christian simplicity be retained and many subtile and curious decisions be not made necessary A few great necessary certain truths are easilier preserved than multitudes of uncertain controverted niceties 2. It is needful that such as are ordained
to retain in Church-Communion multitudes of Infidels Adulterers Fornicators Perjured persons drunkards railers slanderers oppressours hereticks scorners at piety c. And it 's yet worse to cast out men for not subscribing to some lye false doctrine or wicked thing or for refusing down right heinous sin And yet worse is it to make Discipline an engine to dethrone Kings and embroile confound or subdue Kingdoms and enslave the earth § 50. The lower first degrees of Church-Government which is but doctrinally to teach men and reprove them all Pastors must use or they omit the essential work of their office But the full prosecution of it to excommunication or publick repentance is rather needful to the Well-being than to the Being of the Churches and Ministry especially when the Christian-Magistrate doth his part No doubt but the Magistrate may admonish a sinner and command him to make publick Confession in the Church and may shame the impenitent and forbid familiarity with him yea and Church-Communion when the case is notorious or judged by the Pastor But it is the Pastors office to judge of his crime impenitence and repentance in order to excommunication and absolution and herein the Magistrate is not to take on him the Pastors work but to command the Pastor and people to do their duties § 51. III. So much of the necessaries to the Being and Well being of the Ministry As to the exercise it may be gathered from what is said There is further necessary to it 1. Natural ability possibility liberty and opportunity and the peoples acceptance consent and reception 2. And as to the Well-being and success 1. The great diligence and skill of the Minister 2. The forwardness and teachableness and zeal and concord of the flock 3. The Concord of the Ministers and Neighbour Pastors 4. And the countenance and encouragement of faithful Magistrates will much promote it CHAP. VI. IV. What is necessary to the Constitution Administration and Communion of single Churches § 1. BY single and Particular Churches I still mean those that are compounded of many Christians but not of many Churches And I take not the word Church in any of the laâ—e senses for civil or occasional meetings or societies or for every religious concourse of Christians as a Synod an accidental day of fasting and prayer c. nor for a meer Community or neighbourhood of Christians nor for a Christian Kingdom or City governed by the Magistrates sword But for a proper Church as political consisting of Pastor and flock § 2. When the Apostles ordained them Elders in every Church Act. 14. 23. it signifieth that they setled these Elders as the proper fixed Church-guides of those Churches Not that they had no Ministerial power elsewhere but that this was their proper special Charge or Province As a Licensed Physicion that hath a particular Hospital or City is a Physicion every where that he cometh and not breaking order may exercise his Art but he may not invade another mans Hospital or Province nor is bound as the other is to medicate that Hospital c. So a Minister of Christ lawfully invited may Preach and Administer Sacraments yea and Discipline in any other Church pro tempore not as a Lay-man but as a Minister in office But he is not bound to take the Charge of another mans flock nor may intrude disorderly but as a helper or on just call § 3. Titus is appointed to ordain such Elders in every City which is all one as in every Church not that every City then had a Church nor that he was to ordain Elders in the Cities that had no Churches nor that he was forbidden to ordain Elders in Countrey Villages Nor that he was tyed either to ordain many Elders in every Church or City or yet to ordain but One in one City or one Church But because de facto there were few or no Villages then that had Christians enow to make a Church of desirable consistence therefore they were congregate commonly in Cities and great Towns where the Christians of the neighbour Villages joyned with them § 4. Every such single Church then by the Apostles order had their own Pastor one or more and every such fixed Pastor knew his proper Charge and flock And in the time when the Epistles of Ignatius were written every such Church had One Bishop over the other Elders and usually some fellow Elders and Deacons and a single undivided Church was known by these notes of Unity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. In every Church there is one Altar or Altar place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and one Bishop with his fellow Presbyters and Deacons Whence Mr. Mede well noteth the certainty that then no Church of one Altar was denyed a Bishop and no Bishop had more Churches with an Altar than one That is no other Assembly for stated Communion § 5. Yet occasional and subordinate Communion parts of a Church may hold Those called Independents deny not but that in persecution or for want of a large room the same Church may meet by parts in several places at once And all confess that a Parish Church may admit of Chapels and Oratories where distant and weak persons may frequently meet that yet sometimes must come to the Parish Church And families that have sick persons may Communicate with neighbours joyning with them But these are not Churches but parts of such § 6. God hath not said just how many persons must make a single Church no more and no less determinately but he hath given us sufficient notice to guide us by the work and end and by his general precepts and examples § 7. A single Church is a society of Christians of Divine institution consisting of one Pastor or more as the Guiding part and a competent number of private Christians as the Guided part associated by Consent for personal presential holy Communion and mutual assistance in holy Doctrine holy worship of God holy order and holy Conversation for the edification preservation and salvation of that Church and the welfare of the Church universal of which it is a part and the Glorifying and Pleasing of God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier § 8. To open the parts of this definition observe 1. That as in defining a Sacrament so in defining a Church we mention the Divine Institution because it is not human Sacraments or humanly-invented Churches that we treat of § 9. 2. Note that only Christians make a Christian Church as is oft said Professed Christians the visible Church and sincere heart consenters the mystical regenerated saved Church § 10. 3. It is not any other company of Christians but a society or Governed association that we speak of as strictly called a Church § 11. 4. The Pastors and flock are the essential constitutive parts It may be a Community without a Pastor but not a Policie or Ecclesiastical Society While the Pastor liveth it is such a Church in esse existente when the
is not jure Divino § 22. And some called Presbyterians distinguish between a Worshipping Church and a Governed Church and tell us that the lowest Governed Church should consist of divers worshipping Churches It may sometime contein divers subordinate by-meetings as Chapels for them that must needs be oft absent from the full assembly But that it must have many such or that it must or may have many full settled worshipping Churches that personally communicate still distantly only in their several Parishes is contrary to Scripture antiquity and reason and denyeth the first instituted Church form Thorndikes first books which fetch the reason of Church Government from Assemblies were far truer than his later in which he seemed to dream of a humane universal Policy § 23. Either a Bishop as distinct in Order or Degree from Presbyters is necessary to the Being of a Church of Divine institution or not If not then it may be a Church without such a Bishop and have accordingly the rights of a Church in the proper political sense now intended by the word Church And then the old sayings would not be true 1. Of Ignatius that to every Church there is one Altar and one Bishop with his fellow Presbyters and Deacons 2. Of Cyprian that ubi Episcopus ibi Ecclesia 3. Of Hierome and others Ecclesia eft plâ—bs adunat a Episcopo If yea then 1. Our Parish Priests are true Bishops or else the Parish Churches are no true Churches but Chapels as wanting an essential part 2. And then there are no Churches in England of the lowest species for present Communion c. 3. And then it will be hard to confute them that say No form of Church Government is jure Divino or instituted of God 4. And the form of Government being the specifying form of the policy or Church it will follow that God hath instituted no Churches but the universal as headed by Christ 5. And if you will confess to the Separatists that we have no Churches of Gods institution you will never heal their separation § 24. I am therefore past all doubt that if it can be proved that a Bishop is necessary to every true Church that every Parish should have a Bishop and if Arch-bishops be good and meet the Diocesans should be their Arch-bishops And that deposing the Parish Bishops and Churches is a heinous corrupting crime But if Bishops be not necessary to a Church as such the case is otherwise § 25. It is therefore of great importance that single Churches be neither too great nor too small If too small they will want 1. the honour of fulness 2. and the cheering help of praising God in great assemblies 3. and the mutual counsel and vigilant help of many 4. and the safe guidance of many Presbyters or a Bishop and Presbyters which a few people cannot expect And if it be too great it will 1. hinder the comfort of those that want room in the Church assembly 2. or cause the Church to degenerate into another sort of society It is best therefore that it should be as Great as that all the people who are constant worshippers of God on the Lords days may meet in one place where they have liberty Chapels or lesser meetings being allowed to the aged weak sick or very distant yet all that are able coming sometime to the common Church § 26. The first degenerating of single Churches grew 1. out of the ambition of the Pastors to extend their power as far as they could 2. and out of a desire in the people to see their assemblies as honourable for greatness number and concord as they might 3. and out of a conceit that one City should have but one Bishop and so be one Governed Church And hereupon at Alexandria and Rome they began to have several fixed Chapels in the same City and neighbour villages and the Bishop to send Curate-Presbyters to them as he pleased yet so that at first they communicated frequently in the Bishops Church After that these Presbyters were fixed and gave them the Sacraments where they came After that they were tyed to come to the Bishops Church for communion but at Easter Whitsontide or some great and rare seasons After that they were so many and far off that they were no more obliged to come at all or to hear or see the Bishop but only to be distantly ruled by him and their Presbyters Then many Countrey Parishes got Bishops But the City Bishops disagreeing with them long after got them down § 27. Were it true that every City in the old sense should have a Bishop and but one it would follow that every Corporation or great Town or Borough called Market Towns in England should have one the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying such of old And were it so and the Countrey Parishes adjoyning made Chapels and distributed accordingly to the several Towns it would be like the old state of the Church about three hundred and four hundred and five hundred years after Christ and much better than it is though not as it should be § 28. 9. The remote ends are mentioned in the definition viz. the right worshipping and obeying God the welfare of the Church-universal for the parts all contribute to the perfection of the whole and the glory and pleasing of God are the common ultimate end of all § 29. By all this it appeareth what is necessary to make a particular Church and to make a man a member of it And that it is not necessary hereto that the person be a member of a Compound Church Diocesan Provincial Patriarchial National or Papal whatever it be to some of these on any other accounts Nor yet that he make any unnecessary profession promise or Covenant § 30. But to the actual Communion with such a Church in exercise the nature of the thing maketh it necessary that the people consent and be guided by their Pastor in the circumstances belonging to his office which are necessary in genere to be some way determined but not necessary in specie vel individuo this rather than that For instance They that will have communion in publick worship must meet in some capacious place at some day some hour If any one will not come to that place at that time appointed he separateth from that Communion in that act The Scripture must be read in some Translation some order If any say I will not Communicate with you unless you use another translation another order without verses and Chapters or read some other parts he so far separateth from that Church In singing Psalms if he will not joyn in that Version that Psalm that Tune which the Church useth he so far separateth If he will not hear the Preacher unless he change his text his method or use notes or no notes and so in such cases will not follow but lead he separateth so far for all cannot be leaders and be of one mind But if the Minister
will say You shall not communicate with us unless you will swear or say or do some unnecessary thing it is he then that is the divider and unjustly casteth out a Christian CHAP. VII What are the necessary terms of Concord of these single Churches with one another in the same Kingdome or in divers § 1. THat they be under the Government of a Christian Magistrate is necessary to the well-being or great advantage of them though not to the being of which more in due place § 2. That they live as neighbour Churches in Unity of faith and love and avoid all things contrary and to their power help each other according to need and opportunity is their duty § 3. It is necessary that they agree in all things necessary to the communion of men as members of the Church universal mention'd before and in all things essential to particular Churches § 4. If any one excommunicated justly for heresie apostasie or impenitence in any crimes shall offer to defile and endanger any other Church by intrusion or deceit the Church which cast him out is bound by the Laws of Love and Concord to send notice to such endangered neighbour Churches of the person and his case to prevent their hurt And unless the Church that cast him out have criminally forfeited their credit other Churches are bound by the Law of Charity to take their sentence as probably just and not to receive the ejected person till he have either proved his sentence unjust or profess repentance Not that they are bound absolutely to exclude him and deny him audience though yet they claim no superiority over the Church that excommunicated him but as neighbours and parts of the same Church universal they must hear both sides before they deny any Christian communion that claimeth it at least when his allegations have great probability of truth and seem to weigh down all that they have received against him And they may absolve the Criminal upon a just profession of true repentance but such a prosession will not stand with a refusal to confess in the same Church where the man sinned without some special probable reason it being that Church which is most wronged by the scandal and hath heard the causes § 5. If any Church in the same Kingdom or another be accused of violating the Christian faith or of any crime which Christians are bound to disown by avoiding the criminal it is the duty of the accused Church to be ready to satisfie the offended Churches by answering the accusation not as to Rulers by the reasons of obedience but as to Christian neighbours by the rule of common equity and love and for the preservation of unity and peace § 6. If the charge be but general that the Church is guilty of heresie or unsoundness in the faith it is the duty of the accused Church to send to the offended the Profession of their Faith and Religion which need to be no more than this which the offended ought to take as satisfactory We hereby profess that we stand to our Baptismal Covenant fiducially believing in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier and give up our selves to him accordingly in these Relations Believing the articles of all the Creeds in which the universal Church ever agreed and desiring the things contained in the Lords Prayer and consenting to obey the ten Commandements as delivered to us in nature and by Christ and we profess our obligation and Consent to Believe Love and obey all that we do or shall understand to be the revealed word of God even the sacred Canonical books of Scripture and in this common Belief and Love and practice to livein the Communion of the unniversal Church of Christ Renouncing the Devil the world and the flesh as they are enemies to any of this and all doctrines desires and practices contrary hereunto so far as unfeignedly to endeavour to resâ—â—t and overcome them and when we 〈◊〉 and sin to rise by true repentance And all this in Hope of the Love of God the Father the Grace of the Son in our Pardon Justification and Adoption and the Communion of the Holy Ghost and of the Perfection of these and of our selves with the Church in everlasting Glory This may be briefly exprest in Baptism and to present persons that may receive our explications where they doubt of our understanding or sincerity But to distant suspecting persons or Churches such largeness is useful and this is enough § 7. But if any particular heresie or crime be charged on a neighbour Church it is not to be believed without proof nor they to be disclaimed till the charge be sent to them and their defence be heard And herein they ought to offer satisfaction to the offended Church 1. By denying the charge if false 2. By explaining words and actions which are ambiguous and to be suspected 3. In controverted cases by renewing the foresaid profession of all that is necessary explicitely to be held and promising to renounce any opinion or practice as soon as they perceive it contrary thereto 4. And in all cases of words or deeds expressly contrary to Gods doctrine or Law or which they shall be convinced to be sinfull to confess the errour or crime and humbly crave the prayers of the Church for pardon and profess their purpose of future reformation This is the means and this is enough for the offenders satisfaction And if the errour be no real and discerned denyal of any necessary article of faith but an undiscerned remote consequential contrariety with which the professed holding of that particular necessary article which they seem to overthrow may stand that Church or person is not to be rejected from Communion or hereticated For instance If a Church be accused to be Nestorians or Eutychians or Monothelites their answer ought to be Mary is the Mother of Christ who is God and in that sense of God but not of the Deity or as God And Christs Naâ—ures Wills and operations are two as distinct but not two as divided But if they have not so much easie skill to explain themselves but say rudely as Nestorius I will not say that God was two or three months old or as Cyril and Eutychius and Dioscorus Christs natures were two before the Union but since One and not Two if withal they prosess that they believe Christ to be true God and true man in one person and do not destroy deny or confound the Godhead and manhood or any other essential point of faith or religion they ought not to be hereticated or rejected § 8. No Church hath power or duty to deny any other Communion to another Church or person but such as they had power to grant them But to remote persons or Churches never seen by them as in other lands or Countries they can grant them no Presential local Communion but only Mental Therefore they can eject them from none but mental They
as that they forfeit their Toleration § 47. Those are to be accounted Intolerable who do more hurt than good and whose silencing and suppression will do more good than harm All men are faulty and do some harm And few are so bad as to do no good But that which prevaileth must prevail in the judgement of the Magistrate And yet when the suppression of a hurtful person will do by accident much more hurt to the Church or Commonwealth than the doth as it may fall out he is not to be so hurtfully suppressed § 48. Those therefore are intolerable in the Ministry 1. who through ignorance or disability are utterly insufficient for the necessary acts of the office and so will marr and disgrace the work appointed them and make Religious exercises scorned 2. Those that are hereticks in a strict sense that is that deny any Article of faith or practice necessary to Salvation or preach that which plainly overthroweth it 3. Those that are against or utterly corrupt any necessary part of Church-order or of the publick worship of God so as that God accepteth not worship so corrupted or that it tendethto more hurt than good to the assembly 4. those that will not profess the Essentials of Christianity Ministry and Church Communion 5. Those that live such scandalous and wicked lives as disgrace the Ministry and do more hurt than they do good 6. Those that will not promise and perform necessary diligence in the work of the Ministry which they undertake but idly neglect the flock 7. Those that by malignity and misapplication of truth turn their preaching or discourse to the reproach of serious godliness making people think that it is needless or hypocrisie 8. Those that will not promise and perform subjection to the supream Governours of the Kingdom or Republick 9. Those that will not forbear such reviling of Tolerable dissenters as tendeth plainly to destroy love and peace and to turn publick assemblies into stages of malignant strife 10. Those whose Religion or opinion is for burning destroying or exterminating either all dissenters or the innocent or tolerable while they call them Hereticks or that are for the subjecting of Kings or States or people to foreign Usurpers or for giving such a foreign Usurper power to excommunicate depose or murther Kings or temporal Lords and absolve their subjects from their Oaths of allegiance or force them to destroy or exterminate their innocent or tolerable subjects and that exempt the Clergy from subjection to Kings § 49. The Approved Tolerable and Intolerable thus distinguished and thus used by the Magistrate will best answer the ends and interest of Christianity and the Laws of Christ and will do as much to preserve Love Unity and peace as is on earth to be expected which all other contrary ways will unavoidably violate CHAP. IX Objections answered § 1. 1. SOme object against any restraint in Religion and the countenancing and preferring of one sort before others and say that the Magistrate should equally tolerate all or else he will discontent those that are but tolerated and much more those whom he useth as intolerable But this is so unchristian and unreasonable that I think it needless to say much against it Few men that believe there is a God and a life to come and that religion is mans duty and interest can believe that God hath appointed Government for no higher ends than our bodily peace and safety If men once believed what divers Popes have written that the office of the Priest excelleth the Kings as far as the soul excelleth the body and as the Sun excelleth the Stars it would cause religious people to set as light by Kings as they do by these worldly things which Kings have power over § 2. 2. Obj. But each party think themselves in the right and Kings and Parliaments are fallible and if they trouble those that are in the right they are persecutors if others yet they shall be accounted so Answ Being is before Thinking either the King is in the right or the sufferers If they are in the Right either their cause is evident and such as a willing diligent person may understand or not If it be clear the Prince is a persecutor that troubleth them If it be too hard for him he is unfit to be an active man against them for he cannot do it in faith and therefore sinneth and may be a persecutor for ought he knoweth If he or they be ignorant through wilfulness or negligence it will not excuse them If their cause seem clearly good to them and clearly bad to him one of them must needs be sinfully erroneous and it is the erring party that God is against who will be the final judge § 3. 3. Obj. But it is a thing that Princes and Statesmen are ignorant of they are not bred up in the study of Religion Bishops and Clergy-men are liker to understand such matters and it is their work Ans 1. God hath commanded that Kings and all Rulers study his word As Justices should know the Kings Laws the King and they should know Gods Laws It is as truly their office to Rule by them as it is the Ministers to Teach and Guide by them Government by the Sword and Church Government by the word and Keys are to be exercised according to the same Law of God and both have their use about causes Ecclesiastical in which we swear the King to be supreme as to that part which is to be done by the sword or corporal force 2. This objection long used by Popes and their Prelates hath been sufficiently confuted by themselves Church history putteth us quite past doubt that it went ill with the Church while the Clergy had all the power of Religion It hath been Popes and Prelates and Priests that have worse corrupted Religion and disgraced the Church and embroiled the world in religious quarrels and Schisms than ever Emperors and Kings have done Thirteen hundred years lamentable experience confuteth such thoughts as many have and as I have sometime been tempted to my self how well it would go with the Church if the disposal of all matters of Religion were rather in the hands of the Bishops and Clergy than of Kings and Parliaments Nay rarely are any Magistrates so hot for persecution and religious cruelty as the Bishops and Clergy or those that are stirr'd up by them against dissenters or one another The doleful devastations and Schisms about Nestorianism Eutychinnism and such like were caused more by the Bishops than the Magistrates And though Constantius and Valens did much against truth and peace it was by their Clergies instigation He that will consider the lives of Constantine M. Theodosius Senior and Theodosius Junior Aâ—astasius c. and of Charles Otho the Henries and others since in the West will see how much ado the Emperors had to keep the Prelates from Schisms and confusions And he that readeth but the Laws of the Spanish French
invented expositions will be as liable to be wrested by Hereticks as the Scripture It is ridculous presumption to talk of making any Law profession or Articles that a false Heretick may not subscribe to 3. But there is another remedy against them while they conceal their heresie they are no Hereticks in the judgment of the Church Non apparere here is as non esse when they divulge it the judicatures must correct them It 's vanity to dream that the Law is faulty as long as it is but such as men can break or that any Law can be made which none can break But as they break them they are to be judged 4. And we must not rack and divide the good for fear of such letting in the bad The Churches Concord and peace is of more regard than the keeping out of some secret Heretick yea of old he was not called a Heretick that did not separate from the Church All good men agree to the word of God but all will not agree to every word of yours § 13. I conclude In humane affairs there is nothing without imperfection weakness and incommodity and to pretend the cure of these by impossibilities or mischiefs is the way of such as these Thirteen hundred years have been the true schismaticks and distracters of the Church CHAP. X. A draught or specimen of such Forms as are before mentioned for the Approved and the Tolerated Ministers § 1. TThis Chapter should have gone before the ninth But I thought to pass it by lest it seem presumptuous But the observation how ordinarily men miscarry in this work hath perswaded me to run the hazard of mens censures § 2. 1. The form to be subscribed by the Approved Ministry I A. B. do seriously as in the sight of God profess that as I have been in Baptism devoted by the sacred Covenant to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost renouncing the Devil the world and the flesh so far as they are his enemies so I do unfeignedly Believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and consent still to that Covenant in hope of the grace and Glory promised obliging my self to continue by the help of that grace in Faith Love and sincere obedience to the end More particularly § 3. I. I do unfeignedly Believe 1. That there is one Only God an infinite Spirit of Life understanding and will most perfectly powerful wise and good incomprehensibly Three in One and One essence in Three called persons or subsistences by the Church the Father the Word and the Spirit of whom and through whom to whom are all things he being the Creator preserver Governour and the ultimate End of all Our absolute owner our most just Ruler and our most gracious and amiable Father and benefactor 2. I believe that this God created all the world things invisible and visible And made man in his own Image forming a fit Body and breathing into it a spirit of Life understanding and will fitted and obliged to know love and serve his Creator giving him the inferior Creatures for this use making him their Owner their Governour and their End under God But specially forbidding him to eat of the Tree of knowledge on pain of death 3. The woman being tempted by Satan and the man by the woman both fell by wilful sin from their Holiness Innocency and Happiness into a state of Pravity Guilt and misery under the slavery of the Devil world and flesh under Gods vindictive Justice and the condemnation of his Law Whence sinful corrupted guilty and miserable natures are propagated to all mankind And no meer Creature is able to deliver us § 4. II. I believe that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to be their Saviour Who being God and one with the Father took our Nature and became man being conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary named Jesus the Christ who was perfectly holy without sin fulfilling all righteousness and being tempted overcame the Devil and the world and after a life of humiliation gave himself a sacrifice for our sins by suffering a cursed death on the Cross to ransome us and reconcile us unto God and was buryed and descended to Hades and conquering death the third day he rose again And having sealed the New Covenant with his blood he commanded his Apostles to preach the Gospel to all the world and promised the Holy Ghost and after forty daiesascended into heaven where he is God and man the glorified Head over all things to his Church all power being given him in heaven and earth our prevailing Intercessor with God the Father to present us our service acceptable to God and communicate Gods grace and mercies unto us to Teach us Govern protect and judge us and to save and bless and glorifie us § 5. 2. By the new Testament Covenant or Law of grace God through the aforesaid Mediation of Jesus Christ doth freely give to fallen mankind Himself to be their Reconciled God and Father his Son to be their Saviour and his holy Spirit to be their sanctifier and comforter if they will accordingly believe and accept the gift and by faithful covenant give up themselves to him in these Relations Repenting of their sins and consenting to forsake the Devil the world and the flesh so far as they are enemies to God and their salvation and sincerely to obey Christ his Laws and his Spirit to the end bearing the Cross and following him though through sufferings that they may reign with him in Glory All which God will faithfully perform § 6. III. I Believe that God the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and from or by the son was given to the Prophets Apostles and Evangelists to be their infallible Guide in preaching and recording the doctrine of salvation and to be the great witness of Christ and his truth by his manifold Divine operations And that he is given to quicken illuminate and sanctifie all true believers and to save them from the Devil the world and the fleshes temptations from sin and from spiritual misery And that the Holy Scriptures indited by this Spirit are to be believed loved and obeyed as the word of God § 7. 2. I believe that all who by true Consent are devoted to God in the foresaid Baptismal Covenant and so continue are one sanctified Church or Body of Christ and have Communion in the same spirit of faith and Love and have forgiveness of their sins and having one God one Christ one spirit one faith one Baptism and one Hope of Heavenly Glory are bound to keep this unity of the spirit in the bond of peace in the Doctrine worship order and conversation and mutual helps which Christ hath by himself or his Apostles commanded avoiding uncharitable contentions divisions injuries and offences And that the Baptized Covenanters and external Professors of the foresaid Covenant consent are the visible
derogateth from his glory XIV Of Baptism 1. That Baptism was instituted only for the first times or for reception of Infidel countreys when converted and not for to be continued in Christian Countreys and Churches 2. That outward Baptism by water will save the adult that have not true Repentance and faith and sincere consent to the baptismal Covenant 3. That all the children of Infidels Heathens Hereticks or wicked men are certainly saved if they be baptized and have Godfathers professing Christianity though those Godfathers be wicked hypocrites and take not the infants by adoption or otherwise as their own nor really intend to educate them as they promise and if they die before they actually sin and that this is certain by the word of God 4. That all the baptized are delivered from all culpable pravity of soul or inherent sin 5. That it is certain that all baptized Infants of what parents soever have special grace infused into their souls by the Holy Ghost in Baptism 6. That baptism entering all into the Catholick Church obligeth all the baptized to the Bishop of Rome as the supreme head or pastor 7. That the Infants of believers dedicated to God are holy only as legitimate and not bastards but are not as a holy seed under promise to be entered into the Church and Covenant of God by baptism but all baptized in Infancy must be taken as no visible Christians till they are rebaptized 8. That none that sin grosly after baptism are upon their repentance to be received into the communion of the Church 9. That it is not necessary to baptism of the adult that they make any covenant promise or vow to God nor to the baptism of Infants that Parents or Proparents devote them to Christ by entering them into an obliging Vow or Covenant 10. That Baptism was not instituted to invest the baptized in his right to pardon and life but only to enter him into the visible Church where as a disciple he may learn how to come to such right and pardon hereafter 11. That the adult duely baptized have no right to the Communion of the Church though they profess to continue their Covenant-consent and none disprove the truth of their profession unless they have some higher qualification and title XV. Of the Lords Supper 1. That the Lords Supper is but an ordinance for young or carnal Christians but they that have the Spirit must live without it as being above outward signs and ordinances And so of the Lords Day 2. That the Bread broken and Wine poured out to be eaten and drunk are not the representative Sacramental body and blood of Christ delivering us the real benefits of his sacrifice to be received by faith 3. That after the words of Consecration duly uttered there remaineth no true substance of bread or wine but all is turned into the very body and blood of Christ 4. That the wine may justly be denyed the Laity and they be required to communicate by receiving only the bread consecrated or the body of Christ as they call it without the other half of the Sacrament 5. That Christs flesh and blood is really and properly sacrificed by the Priest 6. That ordinarily the Priest is to partake alone and the people only to be Spectators 7. That the consecrated host being Christs body is to be adored as very God 8. That this sacrifice is to be offered by the Priest for the living and the dead and to ease the pains of Purgatory 9. That God himself here deceiveth the soundest senses of all men making that to be no bread or wine which their senses and intellects of things as sensate apprehend as such 10. That it is heresie and deserveth extermination or death to deny these things of the Sacrament and to believe our senses that there remaineth true bread and wine after Consecration 11. That unbelievers and wicked men in the Eucharist truly eat the real body of Christ 12. That the bare receiving of the Sacrament though without true faith and repentance will procure pardon of sin from God and Salvation XVI Of the Church 1. That the Church of Christ as visible is lost or ceased or hath been lost since the Apostles days so that there was a time when Christ had no visible subjects and disciples 2. That the Church differeth from Heathens and Infidels only in opinion and not in real holiness 3. That only the Clergy or Rulers are the Church of Christ 4. That Christ hath instituted a vicarious visible Head of all the world or of all the Church on earth under himself to whom all Christians must be subject as their chief Pastor 5. That this Head or universal Church Monarch is the Bishop of Rome or else a general Council 6. That this Head or chief Ruler Pope Council or both hath universal Legislative power to make Laws obliging the whole world or the whole Church 7. That this Head is made the judge to all Christians what shall be taken for articles of faith and what for heresie and all are bound to believe such judgement or at least to acquiesce in submission to it 8. That no one is bound to believe the Scripture or the Christian Verity but for or upon the proposal of the Pope Council or both 9. That such judgement and proposal is certain and infallible 10. That this Church and its authority must be believed to be given by Christ before men can believe in Christ himself 11. That this Pope Council or both have power from Christ to excommunicate such as deserve excommunication throughout all the world and to judge who deserve it 12. That the Pope hath power to call general Councils out of all Christian Churches or nations on earth and to preside in them and to approve or reject and invalidate their decrees 13. That all Churches are bound to send Bishops or Delegates to â—uch Councils if required by the Pope 14. That a General Council approved by the Pope is infallible in all points of faith else not 15. That the Pope or Council or both may judge all Christian Kings and depose such as they judge deserve it and give their Countreys to others and disoblige their subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance 16. That they may interdict Gods worship to whole Countreys and Kingdomes and the Clergy must obey such interdicts 17. That whom they or the Clergy judge hereticks all are bound to avoid as hereticks be they never so falsly judged such 18. That at least in ordine ad spiritualia the Pope hath power over Princes and their Crowns 19. That the Clergy owe not obedience to Princes nor may be judged by them 20. That the universal Church can have no errour in any point which God hath revealed in his word 21. That the universal Church hath erred or may err in points essential to Christianity or absolutely necessary to Salvation and so become no Church and Christ no King or Head of it 22. That no one is a
Sect. X. 4. Yet when the very Matter of a dividing Heresie is laid upon much Learning or subtle Notions or any words or things very hard to be understood it seldom spreadeth far and liveth long Because it must cost men dear to understand it and humane nature is slothful and multitudes will not be at long and hard study to know what is right or wrong Therefore such as the Rosie Crucians Behmens c. do but little harm Sect. XI 5. It is not only separating from the Church but causing divisions and contentions in a Church which in Scripture is reproved as sinful Schism And indeed this is the commonest acception of the word as may be seen Rom. 16. 17. 1 Cor. 1. 10. 3. 3. 11. 18. Matth. 12. 25. Luk. 12. 52 53. 2 Cor. 12. 25. They that by ill Doctrine or abuse of each other or causless quarrels do disturb the Churches Peace and cause disaffection murmurings and unbrotherly distance are guilty of Schism though they separate not Sect. XII 6. Separating from a Church is sometimes a greater and sometime a less fault than dividing in a Church and sometime no fault but a duty It is a greater fault 1. When the Church is by the Separater falsly accused of greater crimes 2. And when it tendeth to greater hurt It is a less fault when a man removeth from one Church to another though causelesly yet with less accusation of that Church and less detriment to the common Cause It is no fault when there is just cause and it is done in a just manner Sect. XIII 7. Separating from the Universal Church which is the Universality of Christians as Headed by Christ is separating from Christ and ever damnable and is Apostasie Sect. XIV But to separate from some Accident or Integral part of the Church Universal is not to separate from the Church To differ from Christians in any thing essential to Christianity is to apostatize or separate from the whole Church and so it is à materia to renounce the universality of Christians But to differ from the whole Church in some accident or integral is not to separate from it Sect. XV. To separate from any one Church upon a reason common to all is so far to separate from all And upon a reason that is against the essence of all it is to separate from all as Churches Sect. XVI To separate from any Church by denyal of some one essential part of Christianity though all the rest be confess'd is Heresie in the strict sense and Apostasie in a larger sense and to deny all Christanity is Apostasie in the strict sense But the ancient Christians called it Heresie when men separated into distinct opposing Bodies as parties from the generality of Christians for the cherishing of any dangerous errour Sect. XVII It is lawful to separate from particular Churches in all the degrees and Cases following 1. It is lawful to abate our esteem of any Church or Pastor as they are less worthy or more corrupt or culpable and to value more the more worthy Sect. XVIII 2. It is lawful to remove ones dwelling from one City or Parish to another for the just reasons of our worldly Affairs and thereby to remove from other Churches And it is lawful to do the same for the good of our Souls when one Minister is bad or less fit for our Edification and one Church more corrupt and culpable and others more sound and pure and their Communion more conducible to our Salvation Sect. XIX 3. Parish bounds being but humane Institutions for order sake it is lawfull to be of a Church in a neighbour Parish instead of ones own Parish Church in case we have the allowance of the higher Powers or without that in cases of true necessity or when consideratis considerandis the Benefit is evidently greater than any hurt that it is like to do For no man hath power to bind me to that which is to the danger or detriment of my Soul unless at least some greater notorious interest of the Community require it If my Parish have an ignorant unsound Teacher or a weak dull dangerous or unprofitable careless or scandalous vicious Pastor yet tolerable rather than to have none or judged tolerable by the Rulers and the next Parish have an able holy faithful Pastor by whom I am more abundantly edified I am not bound by Mans Commands to trust the conduct of my Soul with the former or to deny my self the benefit of the latter when I cannot remove my dwelling For mens power is not to destruction but to edification and Order is for the Thing Ordered and not against it My Soul is more Christs and my own than the Rulers And I am not unthankfully to neglect the helps offered me by Christ who ascended to give gifts to men for the edifying of his Body merely because a man commandeth me so to do Sect. XX. 4. Even Pope Nicholas and some of the Popish Councils forbad all men to hear Mass from a fornicating Priest Protestants should not be less strict And it is as lawfull to depart from the Parish-Priest for being a Drunkard a Scorner at Godliness a Persecutor an insufficient Guide of Souls as for being a Fornicator And many Councils forbid me hearing Hereticks Sect. XXI 5. There is so great difference between Teachers and Teachers that are tolerable that some by unsuitableness are to some persons almost equal to none some that preach only in high Language fit for learned ears and withall never speak to the people singly in any private oversight do little or no more good to some of the ignorant than none And God useth to work on Souls by Means and according to the aptitude of Means and therefore Heathens that have no Preachers are unconverted And men are not to forsake the ordinary helps and hopes of their Salvation for Parish-Order or mens Commands Christ twice sent the Pharisees to learn the meaning of I will have mercy and not sacrifice Souls are better than Ceremonies as the Redeemer of Souls will judge Sect. XXII 6. Where we cannot joyn with any Congregation without sin imposed on us by Profession Subscription Covenants Oaths Declaration Practice or Omission it is a Duty not to joyn with such Sect. XXIII 7. When the Pastor is an Usurper and hath no true title to that place it is no Schism to desert him By many Canons of Councils and it seemeth to me by Scripture the Bishop is an Usurper who hath not the consent of his Flock and of the Ordainers Much more he that is utterly intolerable by Insufficiency Heresie Tyranny wickedness or Malignancy against that Piety which he should promote Sect. XXIV 8. Where one Diocesan Bishop hath many hundred Parishes under him which have no other Bishop and so are not taken for Churches but for Chappels or parts of a Church by them that take a Bishop to be a constitutive part of a Church there he that goeth from his
French Italian Belgick English and other later Histories the horrid wickedness of Popes and the Mischiefs they have brought upon the World and the blood they have shed to settle their Kingdoms will be known to Mankind and will not suffer men universally to believe that God ever made such Governours essential to his Church or necessary to its Unity Sect. XIV 8. Because Kings and States will never become all so tame and servile as to resign their Kingdoms so far to an universal Monarch and to become his Subjects especially after the sad experience of his Government Sect. XV. 9. Because if the people were never â—o blind there will in all generations arise wise and Learned persons who will know all these things and never consent to Popery Sect. XVI 10. Lastly from Experience The Universal Church now doth not nor ever did unite in the Roman Papacy and therefore never will do That now they do not is past doubt with those that know the Papists are but the third or fourth part of the Christian World Bishop Bramhall saith they are but a fifth part The great Empire of Ethiopia the Christians in Egypt Syria Mesopotamia that are falsly called by them Nestorians and Eutychians or Jacobites who parted from the Greeks upon the ejection of Diosecrus by the Council of Chalcedon the Armenians Circassians Mengrelians Georgians those scattered in the Persian Empire the Greeks scattered throughout the Turkish Empire the Empire of Moscovie the Kingdoms of Sueden Denmark England Scotland and Ireland the Subjects of the Dukes of Saxony Brandenburgh Lunenburgh Hanover Osnaburgh Holstein the Prince of Hassia the Palsgrave of the Rhine Ducal Prussia Curland Transilvania all the Protestant free Cities in Germany Dantzick and others tolerated in Poland those in Hungary some in Walachia and Moldovia Belgia called the Low-Countreys with Friesland Embden Geneva c. the Protestant Cantons of Helvetia those in Rhoetia in Piedmont c. and those tolerated in France Our Plantations in the West-Indies or America viz. New-England Virginia Barbados Bermudas Jamaica and the rest All these are Christians that unite not in the Pope nor are subject to him I know they say that these are Hereticks and Schismaticks and no parts of the Church But that is too easie a way of arguing and no Cure at all for Christians discord By this way of reasoning they may prove that all the Christian Church or World is united in the Pope if he had but ten Subjects because all the rest are no part of the Christian Church or World as a mad man proved that all the World was his because he thought his House and Land was all the World But Christ will not so easily lose his Church nor be disputed out of his Inheritance by so gross a fallacy If you argue None are parts of the Christian Church but the Popes Subjects All the Popes Subjects unite in the Pope Ergo all parts of the Christian Church are united in the Pope You must prove your Major to Christ better than ever you did before he will be so deposed from his Kingdom and lose those whom he so dearly bought The Bishop of Constantinople Alexandria Ephesus Canterbury may say the like that none are Christians but their Subjects but this is it that I say the World of Christians are not united in Sect. XVII And as it is so now it was so in the last Age And though some of them cheat Women by telling them that all the Christian world before Luther were united in subjection to their Popes they must burn all their own Church History and Councils and make men ignorant of what is past in former ages before this will be believed by men that can read Latin and Greek certainly they do not believe it themselves They cannot though they would Was all the West subject to the Pope when so many hundred thousand were murdered for being against him When the Bohemians were so persecuted by warrs when Spain it self hath been accused of such Heresie when most of Germany stuck to the Emperours and despised the Popes when France and England have been censured and Interdicted by him and obeyed not his Interdicts when for many Ages most of Italy hath been a Field of warr and fought against him when Rome it self hath so oft driven him away But especially when upon the Constantinopolitane Decree de tribus Capitulis Pope Vigilius was forsaken by much of Italy and the West and all his Successors for about an hundred years and the Patriarch of Aquileia set up as their Head instead of Rome till Sergius after reconciled them And all this while were not the Greeks Moscovites Armenians Syrians Abassines and all the rest before mentioned in Asia and Africa c. from under the Pope I have oft asked and ask again was all Christendome subject to the Pope of whom their Melchior Canus saith Lecd Com. cap. 7. fol. 201. That not only the Greeks but almost all the rest of the Bishops of the whole World have fought to destroy the Priviledges of the Church of Rome and indeed they had on their side the Arms of Emperours and the Greater number of Churches and yet they could never prevail to abâ—â—gate the Power of the One Pope of Rome Was all the Christian World under him when their Raynerius saith cont Wald. catal in Bibl. Patr. To. 4. p. 773. The Church of the Armenians and Ethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome Was all the Church under him before the Turks conquered the Greeks when the Greek Church alone and the rest in the Eastern Empire were twice as many as all the Western Churches and Abassia and all in the East and South without the Empire were also from under him Yea and when their own Jacobus de Vitriaco writeth Histor Orient c. 77. who dwelt at Jerusalem That the Churches of the Easterly parts of Asia alone exceeded in number the Christians either of the Greek or Latine Church And their Brochardus that lived also there saith that Those called Schismaticks by us are far better men than those of the Roman Church Sect. XVIII If they say that at least for the first six hundred years all the Church was governed by the Pope I answer It is more probable which Marnixius and many Protestants affirm that for the first six hundred years there was not one Papist in the world that is One that took the Pope to have the Governing power over all the Church on Earth The oft cited words of Gregory the first and Pelagius plainly shew that they abhorred the Claim The Pope was from the year 300. till 600. and after the first Bishop in the Roman Empire 1. Under Councils and Emperours 2. Not Ruling the other Patriarchates but sitting before them in Councils 3. And this by Mâ—ns Ordination only in one Empire 4. And had no Rule in any of the extraimperial Churches in the World even here with
us the Britains rejected them and the Scots would not eat or converse with them The Abassine Empire was never under them nor those of India and Persia And the Councils in which they had the first seat were but of one Empire as is after proved And as for the first three hundred years under Pagan Emperours their own Writers confess the Church of Rome was little set by that is it had no governing power over the rest nor is there any pretence to think they had The first that talk'd very high was Leo the first who called himself the Head of the Catholick Church But by Catholick was then meant usually the Churches in the Empire only and by Head he meant the prime Bishop in order but not the Governour of all Nor was his claim if he meant any more approved by the Churches in that Age. Though the Council of Chalcedon highly applauded him and his Epistle as an advantage to carry their Cause against Dioscorus who had excommunicated the Pope and took him for the prime member of their Council yet they thought meet in their Canons to declare that it was but by humane mutable right in the Roman Empire Let them shew us if they can when and where the universal Church on Earth ever subjected themselves at all to the Pope Much less can they bring any pretense of it for the first three hundred yeas Had they any Meeting in which they agreed for it Did they all receive Laws Ordination or Officers from Rome or from its Emissaries If we were so foolish as to believe that his precedence in General Councils was a proof of the Popes Monarchy yet it 's easie to prove 1. That for 300 years there was no General Council 2. And that it was not the Pope that presided at Nice 3. And that those Councils were but Imperial and not truly Universal But if all the Church ever had been subject to the Pope as being at first except Abassia almost confined to the Roman Empire it doth not follow that it will ever be so again when it is dispersed into so many Kingdoms of the World The Jesuites at first were all under the King of Spain and the Mahometans at first all under one Prince but they are not so now Is it likely that ever all Christian Mahometan and Heathen Kings will suffer all their Christian Subjects to be under the Government of a Foreign Priest But their own Writers agree that the Apostles at first were dispersed into many Countreys besides the Roman Empire and that Ethiopia was converted by the Eunuch mentioned Acts 8. initially its like before Rome and fullyer by St. Matthew And you may see in Godignus Alvarez Damianus a Goez and others full evidence that they were never Subjects to the Pope of Rome I conclude then 1. That Rome is not owned this day as the head of Unity by all Christians 2. That it never was so taken for the Governing and Uniting Head 3. And that the reason of the thing fully proveth that it never will be so I may adde that indeed it is not known among themselves who are the consenting Subjects of the Pope or Members of their Church It is indeed Invisible or a Church not knowable For 1. They are not agreed nor ever like to be what is the essential qualification of a Member of the Church Or what that Faith is that must make a Member Some say it must be the Belief of all the Creed explicitely others of some few Articles others that no more is necessary ad esse than to believe explicitly that God is and that he is a Rewarder of good works and to believe that the Church is to be believed Of which see Fr. a Sanct. Clara in his Deus Natura Gratia 2. And their forcing men into their Church with Tortures Fire and Sword leaveth it utterly uncertain who are Consenters and who are in the Church as Prisoners to save Limbs and Life And if they ever recover England Scotland Ireland Germany and the other Reformed Churches it must be by the Sword and Warrs and Violence and never by force of Argument And if they should conquer us all which is their hope and trust it will not follow that men are of their minds because they cannot or dare not contradict them no more than because they are dead Experience Reason and Scripture then do fully prove to men that are willing to know the truth that the Universality of Christians will never be united to the Roman Papacy Yea that this Papacy is the greatest of all Schisms 1. By setting up a false Head of Union and 2. By cutting off or renouncing three parts of the Christian World even all Christians except the Subjects of the Pope CHAP. V. The Vniversal Church will never unite in Patriarchs or any other humane Form of Church-Government Sect. I. WHether or how far such Forms may consist with Union is a Question that I am not now debating any further than shall be anon intimated by the way But that they will never become the Bond of Union or be received by all and that to make any such thought Necessary to universal Unity is Schism I am easily able to prove Sect. II. And this needeth no other proofs than what are given against uniting in the Papacy in the former Chapter As 1. Patriarchs and other humane Institutions being not of God but Man the whole Church can never unite in them 1. Because they will never all agree that any men have true Authority given them by God to make new Church-Officers and Forms that shall be necessary to the Unity or Concord of the Church Universal 2. They will never agree who those men are that God hath given such power to if they did suspect that such there are A Prince hath no Power out of his Dominions 3. They will never agree that if man made such Forms or Offices they may not unmake them again if they see cause or that their Acts bind all their Posterity never to rescind or change them 4. They will never find that all the Christian World ever agreed herein and so in all Posterity is obliged by their Ancestors 5. Much less will any ever prove that the Institution was Divine Sect. III. If any say that the Apostles settled this Form by the Spirit the Universal Church will never believe it For 1. No Scripture saith so 2. No true credible History saith so 3. If the Apostles settled Patriarchs it was either as their own Successors or as a new Office And it was either by joynt consent or man by man each one apart But 1. Had they settled them as their Successours they would have settled twelve or thirteen But there were but five settled at all besides some new petty Patriarchs as at Aquileia when they cast off Rome 2. No Writer tells us of any meeting of the Apostles to agree of such a Form 3. No nor that ever they settled them 4. History assureth
down Sect. XI 3. They turn all the Parish-Churches into Chappels or meer parts of one Church and Unchurch them all in the judgment of those that take a Bishop to be essential to a Church And all will not agree to Unchurch all such Parishes Sect. XII 4. It maketh true Discipline as impossible as is the Government of so many score oâ— hundred Schools by one Schoolmaster or Hospitals by one Physician without any other Schoolmaster or Physician under him but Ushers and Apothecaries which all Christians will not agree to Sect. XIII 5. It is contrary to the Practice of the Primitive Churches and casteth out their sort oâ— Parochial Bishops as I have elsewhere fully proved 1. From the Testimonies of many such as that oâ— Ignatius before cited 2. From the custom of choosing Bishops by all the People 3. And of managing Discipline before all the Church 4. By the custom mentioned by Tertulliâ—â— and Justin Martyr of receiving the Sacrament onely from the hand of the Bishop or when he Consecrated it 5. By the custom of the Bishops onely Preaching except in case of his special appointment 6. In every Church the Bishop sate on a high Seat with the Presbyters about him 7. The Bishop onely pronounced the Blessing 8. Many Canons after when the Churches grew greater command all the People to be present and communicate with the Bishop on the great Festivals These and many more Evidences prove That in the Primitive Times the Bishops had but single Churches and every Altar and Church had a Bishop Sect. XIV 6. The very Species of the old Churches is thus overthrown and the old office of Presbyters therewith which was to be assistant Governors with the Bishop and not meer Preachers or Readers And all these Changes all Christians will not agree to Sect. XV. 7. Especially the sad History of Councils and Prelacy will deter them from such Concord when they find that their Aspiring Ambition and Contention hath been the grand Cause of Schisms and Rebellions and kept the Church in confusion and brought it to the lamentable state in East and West that it is in Sect. XVI 8. And constant Experience will be the greatest hinderance As in our own Age many good Men that had favourable thoughts of Diocesans are quite turned from them since they saw Two thousand faithful Ministers silenced by them and that it is the work of too many of them to cast out such and set up such as I am not willing to describe And such Experience After-Ages are like to have which will produce the same effects When Experience persuadeth Men That under the name of Bishops they are Troublers Persecutors and Destroyers they will account them Wolves and not agree to take them for their Shepherds It will be said That Good Bishops are not such It 's true and that there are Good Ones no sober Man doubteth But when 1300 years Experience hath told Men That the Good Ones are few in comparison of the Bad Ones ever since they had large Dominions and Jurisdictions And when Reason tells Men That the worst and most worldly Men will be the most diligent seekers of such Power and Wealth and that he that seeketh them is liker to find them than he that doth not and so that Bad men are still likest to be Diâ—cesans And when the divided scattered persecuted Flocks find that the work of such Men is to silence the most conscionable Ministers and to be Thorns and Thistâ—es to the People though they wear Sheeps cloathing Men will judge of theâ— by their fruits and the Churches will never be united in them Sect. XVII 9. The greatest Defenders of Episcopacy say so much to make Men against them as will hinder this from being an uniting course I wiâ—l instance now but in Petavius and Doctor Hamâ—â—d who followeth him and Scolus who saith 〈…〉 Clara led them the way These hold That the Apâ—stâ—â—s setled a Bishop without any subject sort of Presbyters in every City and single Congregational Church And Doctor Hammond Annot. in Act. 11. Dissertat adversus Blondel saith That it cannot be proved that there were any subject Presbyters in Scripture-times but that the word Presbyter every where in Scripture signifieth a Bishop And if so 1. Men will know that the Apostolical Form was for every Congregational Church to have a Bishop of its own 2. That no Bishop had more setled Congregations than one For no such Congregation could worship God and celebrate the Sacrament of Communion as then they constantly did without a Minister And one Bishop could be but in one place at once and so without Curates could have but one Assembly 3. And Men will be inquisitive By what Authority Subject Presbyters and Diocesan Bishops and Churches were introduced after Scripture-times in which they will never receive universal satisfaction If it be said that the Apostles gave Bishops Power to make a subject order of Presbyters and to turn Parish or Congregational Churches into Diocesan and so to alter the first Forms of Government when they were dead this will not be received without proofs which never will be given to satisfie all Nay it will seem utterly improbable and Men will ask 1. Why did not the Apostles do it themselves if they would have it done Was not their Authority more unquestionable than theirs that should come after If it be said that there were not qualified Men enow it will 2. Be asked Were there not like to be then greatest Choice upon the extraordinary pouring out of the Spirit 3. Do we not find in Corinth so many inspired gifted persons in one Assembly that Paul was put to limit them in their Prophecying yet allowing many to do it one by one And Acts 13. there were many Prophets and Teachers in Antioch And at Jerusalem more and at Ephesus Acts 20. and at Philippi Phil. 1. 1 2. there were many Bishops or Elders And such Deacons as Stephen and Philip c. would have served for Elders rather than to have none 4. Doth not this imply that after-times that might make so great a change may also do the like in other things 5. And that Diocesans and subject Presbyters be but humane Institutions and therefore Men may again change them 6. Doth it not dishonour the Apostles to say that they setled one Form of Government for their own Age which should so quickly be changed by their Followers into another species All these things and much more will hinder Universal Concord in Diocesans Sect. XIX Yet I must add that there is great difference between Diocesans both as to their Government and their Persons whence some Churches may comfortably live in Concord under them though 〈◊〉 be divided and afflicted under them 1. Some Diocesans have Diocesses so small that Discipline is there a possible thing Others as ours in England have some above a thousand some many hundred or score Parishes which maketh true Discipâ—â—â— impossible 2. Some Diocesans exercise
the Church Keys of Excommunication and Absolution only themselves Otheâ—â— delegate them to Presbyters and thereby tell the People that Presbyters are capable of them Others which is the Case with us in England do commit them to Lay-Chancellors who Excommunicate and Absolve by Sentence commanding a Priest to publish it 3. Some Diocesans may if they please allow the Parish-Priest to be Episcopus Gregis and to exercise so much of his true office in his Parish as shall keep up some tolerable Purity Order and Discipline themselves receiving Appeals and being Episcopi Pastorum 〈◊〉 this is rare I know none such But they leave the Parish-Priest no power so much as to suspend his own Act in administring Baptism or the Eucharist or pronouncing decreed Excommunications or Absolutionâ— when it is against his Knowledge and Conscience no though the People profess that they take him not for their Pastor or Guide at all or refuse to speak with him in case of Ignorance suspected Heresie or Scandal 4. Some Diocesans are learned good and holy Men and set themselves to promote Godliness and encourage the best Ministers such we have had in England as Grindall Jewel Usher and many more excellent Men. But others in jealousie of their places power and interest suspect and set themselves against painful Preachers and strict Men especially if they dissent from them and take them for dangerous Enemies and persecute them and countenance the ignorant Rabble to strengthen themselves against them So that particular Concord will be promoted by some Diocesans but Universal Concord will never be so attained by them Sect. XX. There are many Learned Divines who think that Forms of Church-Government are mutable and not necessary to all times and places and that as Prudence may change other Rites Circumstances and Orders so it may do this And some Papists are of this mind Read Card. Cusanus de Concordia and Gorson de Auferibilitate Papae And the Italian Bishops at Trent were for the dependance of Bishops on the Pope as the Maker of their Order or Giver of their Power And if so it is not capable of being necessary to Catholick Unity which may it self be changed And most Protestants and Papists hold that Men may turn Diocesan Bishops again into Parochial if they saw cause And all confess that Man may set up Bishops 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in every City which in the old sense was in every great Town like our Corporations or Market-Towns which is greatly different from the Roman or the English or the French or the Italian Diocesses Sect. XXI Yea there are very Learned Divines that think no Form of Church-Government is Jure Divino or of Divine determinate Institution so though Doctor Edward Reynolds late Bishop of Nâ—rwich and Doctor Stillingfleet doth not only think so himself but hath cited great and many Patrons of that opinion and brought a great many of Arguments for it in his Irenicon Be these in the right or wrong no Man of this opinion can believe any one Form of Government necessary to the Unity of the Church or fit to be the terms of Universal Concord And it is certain that some will still be of their opinion besides those that account Diocesans unlawful CHAP. VI. The Vniversal Church will never unite in General Councils as their Head or as necessary to Vnion Sect. I. THose that are not for the Absolute Sovereignty of the Bishop of Rome over all the World do yet many of them think that they are very moderate Men if they hold but the Superiority of Councils above the Pope or limit the Popes power to the advice and consent of Councils taking them to be necessary to Unity But the contrary is very easily proved much more their insufficiency Sect. II. 1. It is certain that the Church had Union before there was any General Council The first at Nice was 310 years at least if not more after the Birth of Christ There is none pretended to be before that by any judicious men They that instance in the Consultation of the Apostles Elders and Brethren at Jerusalem Acts 2. may easily see reason to convince them that those were but the Apostles Elders and Brethren that were ordinarily then resident at one City and Church And such as pretended not to be Governours of all the Apostles Elders and Brethren who then were absent about the world The Popes and his Cardinals may say they are a General Council but who will believe them These at Jerusalem were not sent from all the Churches but one of the Churches sent to them as fittest to advise them and as being men most certainly and eminently inspired by the Holy Ghost It 's true that Christ and his Apostles had a Governing power over all the Church And if they will impose on us no other sort of General Councils as so necessary but such as have such office power and infallibility and dwell together in one house or place and are not sent from other Churches as their Representatives and can prove such a Power we shall submit to such a Council Pighius hath said enough of that Novelty and against the Governing power of General Councils That which was not essential to the Church 310 years is not so now Sect. III. 2. If General Councils be the necessary means of Union it is either for their Laws or their Judgment and it is either past Councils or present ones or both 1. If it be the Laws of past Councils then one Council that can make Laws enough at first may serve without any After-Councils And if it be enough that there have been General Councils why is not the Church united by them Then it is no matter if there never be any more And why may not Christs own Laws serve for Church Union 2. But if it be present Councils that are necessary for Laws or Judgment then the Church is now no Church without them Sect. IV. 3. There is now no General Council in the world and yet the Church hath essential Union Nay as it is long since there was one in their own account so we know not whether ever there will be more the Interest of the Pope being against it Sect. V. 4. The great disagreement that is about Councils in the Christian World proveth that they can never be the terms of Universal Agreement 1. It is not agreed who must call them 2. Nor out of what Christian Countries they must come whether all or but some and which the Papists saying that three parts of Christians may be absent or have no right to send being Hereticks or Schismaticks and others think Papists to be Hereticks Schismaticks and Antichristian 3. Nor what Number are necessary to make a Council 4. Nor in what Countrey they must meet 5. Nor what their work is 6. Nor what Power they have 7. Nor how far they are to be believed 8. Nor which are to be taken for approved Councils and which not 9. Nor
what to do if they contradict each other or the Pope or the Scriptures 10. Nor whether any more Councils be necessary than what are past already But the Papists themselves hold That they are not the stated Head or Governing Power of the Church else there were now no Church because there is no General Council but as a Consultation of Physicians in extraordinary 〈◊〉 of the Churches maladies Sect. VI. 5. It is certain That the Univerâ—â—â— Church was never united in their subjection to Councils yea that even at the greatest Councils called General at Nice Constantinople Ephesus and Chalcedon and the rest there were not Delegates from all the Churches without the Empire nor did they all subject themselves unto them yea it is certain That there never was an Universal Council of the Church throughout the World but that they were onely called General as to one Empire and so were but as National Councils This I have elsewhere proved at large in my Answer and Reply to Johnson for the Churches Visibility 1. By the names that did subscribe the Councils One Johan Presidis at Nice is an Exception there easily answered 2. Because the Roman Emperor called them whatever Papists say against it to the Ignorant who had no power but of the Empire 3. Because no Summons was sent to any much less to all out of the Empire as History acquainteth us 4. They were all under the five Patriarchs and the Metropolitanes of the Empire The Abassines subjection to Alexandria was since the revolt of Dioscorus 5. We read of no Execution of their Canons out of the Empire by either casting out Bishops or putting them in 6. Theodoret giveth it as the reason why James Bishop of Nisibis was at the Council of Nice because Nisibis then obeyed the Roman Emperor and not the Persian Hist. Sanct. Pat. cap. 1. 7. The Emperors oft decided their differences and set Civil Judges among them to keep order and determine and corrected them and received Appeals and cognisance of their proceedings All which and more prove evidently that they were but Universal as to that one Empire â—ay rarely or never so much and not as to the world Sect. VII It is probable if not certain that there never will be an Universal Council unless which God forbid the Christian Society should be reduced to a small and narrow compass when we are hoping its increase For 1. The differences who shall call them and the rest before named are never like to be agreed 2. Turks Heathen and Nations in War against other or hating Christians will never all consent and suffer it 3. The jealousie that Christian Princes have of Papal Tyranny will never let them agree to send their Subjects to it The Case of the Abassines Greeks Armenians Moscovites Protestants c. proveth this 4. The distance is so vast that the East and West Indians and Ethiopians cannot come so far to answer the Ends of a General Council 5. Should they attempt it their Number must be so unproportionable to the nearer parts that it would be no true General Council to signifie by Votes the Churches sense 6. They could not all meet and consult in one room if they were truly Universal 7. They could not all understand each other through diversity of Language 8. Their present difference and old experience assureth us that they would fall altogether by the ears and increase the Schism 9. They would not live to get home again so far to bring and prosecute the Concord 10. The People and Priests at home would not agree to receive them Sect. VIII Yea it is certain that it would be a most heinous sin to call a true Universal Council worse than an hundred Murders For 1. If young Men came in no just proportion it would but mock the world and prepare for Heresie or Tyranny If experienced aged Men came from America Ethiopia Armenia c. and the Antipodes the Voyage and Labour would murder them 2. Their Losses would be unspeakable to their Churches 3. Yea their absence so many years would be to their Churches an unsufferable loss 4. The benefits were not like to countervail the loss if they did not hurt by differences or error or tyranny it will be a wonder Sect. IX The sad History of Councils too fully proveth that they have been so far from being the causes of Concord and Preventers or Healers of Schisms that they have been one of the most notorious causes of division and distraction Having proved this in a peculiar Treatise A Breviate of the History of Bishops and Councils I must not here repeat it The Council of Nice did best But as Constantine was fain to keep Peace among the Bishops in person and burnt their numerous Libels against each other so wise men think he might another way have better suppressed Arianism and prevented the many contrary and divided Councils which this one did by one word occasion and have prevented the Persecutions which Valens and Constantius exercised And had the time of Easter been left at liberty perhaps it had as much made for Peace What the first Council at Constantinople did the sad Case and sadder description of Gregory Nazianzene tell us whose character of the Bishops not Arians as some talk should not be read without tears by any whence he learned the danger of Councils and resolved never to come to more What all the Bastard Councils did at Ariminum Sirinium Alexandria Milan c. I need not tell And what Schism and Bloodshed was occasioned by the first and second Council at Ephesus yea what streams of Blood Desolation Schism and many Ages deplorable enmity and confusion were caused by the Council of Calcedon I need tell no one that hath read Church History It is true indeed that the Nestorians and Eutychians were condemned in these and the Mâ—nothelites in many following But whether mutual understanding might not have made a better end I appeal to a Thousand years experience and to the nature of the Heresies there condemned which seem to be much formed in and by ambiguous words which a good Explication might have better healed than Anathema's and Bloodshed Of this I spake before and often The Nestorians said that Mary was not to be called the Mother of God but of Christ The Orthodox said the contrary when the Orthodox never meant that she begat the Godhead and the Nestorians never denied that she begate him that is God Where then is the difference but in words one speaking of the Abstract Deity which the other never meant The Nestorians were charged with holding two Persons in Christ instead of two Natures which yet Nestorius plainly denieth but Cyril charged it on him by consequence because he refused the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 on the foresaid account thinking that denomination a ratione formali is most apt And it seems one took Nature in the same sense as others took Person meaning the same thing The Eutychians asserted
Stones or a Wife of a Male â—orma non recipitur nisi in materia disposita As he that must profess Physick or Philosophy or Law or Grammar or Musick must be tolerably qualified to do what he professeth or else he is but equivocally called a Physician Philosopher Lawyer Musician c. whatever Title Licence or Commission he hath so is it here Sect. VI. 3. God hath told us in Scripture that these special qualifications are Christs own Gifts conferred on Men for the work of the Ministery Ephes 4. 8 9 10 c. 1 Cor. 12. And that the qualifying Men thus is Gods calling them to the Office and the Holy Ghost is said to set them over the Church by his special Gifts Sect. VII 4. But for preserving Order and avoiding Usurpation God hath described how these Qualifications shall be discerned and judged of which is called the External Call which is 1. That the Person shall discern them in himself viz. competent Faith and Knowledge Willingness and Desire and Ability for utterance and practice For he that thinketh not himself capable cannot consent and he that consenteth not is no Minister But no Man is to be the sole Judge of his own fitness else the most self-conceited would be the Invaders of the Office 2. Therefore the Senior Pastors are ordinarily to try them and judge of their fitness and by Ordination invest them by delivery with the power 3. The Peoples need of them must make them capable of the Correlation and their consent is necessary to their Reception For no Man can be a Teacher to those that will not hear nor a Pastor to those that consent not to take him for their Pastor Sect. VIII 5. The Person râ—câ—ipient being truly found and determined of Gods own Law doth of a self give him his Power and Oblige him to his work As it is not left to the Ordainers to judge whether the Churches shall have Pastors or nene or what the Power and Works of the Office shall be nor what Qualificaâ—ons shall be necessary to reception but only to discern who are the Men that God chooseth and maketh most receptive and so to discern Gods Will which is the Person and declare it and invest him so it is not the Ordainer nor People that have the Office or Power to give to him that they ordain and choose but it resisteth directly from Christs concession in his Law As a Woman chooseth her Husband and the Minister celebrateth Marriage for Order sake but Gods Law giveth the Husband his power over the Wife And as in a Corporation or City the King by his Charter saith Every Year on such a day such Persons shall Choose a Man thus qualified to be their Mayor and the Recorder shall swear him and invest him and I hereby grant him thus Chosen and Sworn such and such Power and Command him to do thus and thus Here the Electors do but determine of the qualified recipient Person and the Recorder invest him but his Power ariseth immediately from the Kings Charâ—er And if the Choosers or Invester say it shall be more or less or other it is null that they say and shall not infringe or change his Office Sect. IX Now it is supposed that if a point of Order be omitted If the Election day by Fire or Plague or War be overpast If the Recorder be dead or refuse his Office that this doth not totally Null the Charter One chosen a week after in case of necessity may have the Power Or if that Years Election should hereby be made void the Charter is not void but will the next Year authorize the Person chosen Interruption will not hinder this And if one that had not a just Election or Investiture should intrude this Year the Charter will authorize the next notwithstanding Or if the Recorder that invested the last was an Intruder the next may yet be truly authorized Or if the Charter were that every former Mayor shall invest the next it would not hinder a Succession if a former had usurped For the Charter still reviveth it and is supposed to appoint such means as are sufficient if a circumstance fail So is it in the present Case If a Bishop were an Usurper conterfeiting his own Ordination or if a Presbyter pretend himself a Bishop or to have Ordaining Power when he hath not or if an unjust Choice be made the next Man hath still a due way of entrance yea and want of such a point of Order when it is not fraudulently contemned or refused Nulleth not the Office Power Order is for the thing ordered and for the common good and not to be pretended against it If the Pharisees that sate in Moses Chair were to be heard and the High-Priests that were then unlawfully called out of the true line and buying the Office of the Romans for money were to be submitted to in their Office much more a Christian Pastor truly qualified by God and chosen by the Flock and approved by Senior Pastors though there were some point of Order wanting Sect. X. Yea in case of necessity were there no Ordination but just Qualification and Election it wouâ—d not nullifie the Office nor hath God promised that no place shall fall under such necessity For Christ hath taught us That He will have mercy and not sacrifice and that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath and Paul and Apollo are for the Church And as in Physick or Soldiery or Reâ—â— of the Poor that must be done by the Law of Nature which cannot be done according to all the Points of an Ordering Law of Man so is it here It is meet for the safety of Mens Health that none practise Physick but a Licensed Physician But in Cases of Necessity when Physicians are wanting every one that hath skill may use it and an able Man may be a Physician unlicensed rather than see Men perish whom he may help It hath been my own Case In a great and poor Town where was no Physician came an Epidemical Plurisie had they been neglected most had dyed Necessity constrained me to advise them and they all recovered Thereupon their Poverty and Importunity constrain'd me to practise Physick many Years only gratis and God by it saved the lives of multitudes should I think in this case of Necessity that I sinned because I took not a Licence which resolving not to continue the Practice I could not do So I have known some skill'd in Law that have help'd many by Council though they were no Lawyers So none may take up Arms as a Soldier without the King's Commission But in case Traytors and Rebels suddenly endanger King and Kingdoms or Enemies invade the Land every Man is a Soldier by the Law of Nature which also enableth every Man to defend his Life Purse House Parents Neighbors against Thieves and Murderers The Law of the Land ordereth That the Poor be kept by the Parishes from Begging and that
and in the Mâ—nâ—thelites Error and a great part for Image-worship and as now many Churches of the Protestants agree in Consubstantiation and Church-Images and many in rejecting Prelacy and many in asserting it but all agree not in any of these though the eldest sort of Episcopacy for ought appeareth almost all in many ages did acknowledge and agree in But yet that which never united the Universal Church but tended to discord will have everywhere usually no better a tendency § II. Yet I have before enumerated divers Particulars which are needful and useful to the Concord of a particular Church which are not so to the Universal As that all the Members have the same Numerical Pastors the same Translation of the Scriptures read to them the same Versions and Tunes of Psalms when they meet together the same place and day and hour of meeting Because these in the nature of the thing are necessary to Concord and avoid Discord and Confusion And if divers Churches associated or all in a Kingdom or divers Kingdoms can agree in the same convenient modes and circumstances as the same Translation of the Bible so far as they have one language the same day of Easter Anniversarily to Commemorate Christs Resurrection as they do weekly on the same first day and some such like it will be laudable so it be done by voluntary consent as a thing of convenience and not of necessity and without tyrannizing over one another or persecuting or despising those that differ or turn it into an Engine of Rents and Schism by making it necessary to their communion which is the unhappy end of most humane impositions of indifferent unnecessary things He that thinketh he hath hit on the fittest Ceremonies â—ites or Modes is seldom ever content with liberty to use them but he must force all others if he can to his way and take away the liberty of all that differ from him We see it by sad experience that men think their Forms and Ceremonies cast out if all may not be compelled to use them though many think them sinful and they had rather have none of them than have them upon terms of meer liberty lest they be disgraced by the disuse or contradiction of those that do forbear theâ— And such men are never content with Union and Concord in Gods own Institutions and in circumstances that are in genere necessary § III. But some men are stiff in the Schismatical Opinion that though Churches of many Kingdoms may charitably differ in Ceremonies and indifferent things yet none in the same Kingdoms should be suffered so to differ of which I spake before But 1. Christ hath given us no such different measures of our Charity Forbearance or Communion 2. The old Churches were quite of another mind as Socrates and Sozomen shew in several instances And it is known that in the same Empire every Bishop had power to use his own Liturgy and other Modes as I instanced in the Canon that requireth every man to bring his Form first to the Synod to be tryed and in the contention between Basil and the Church of Neocesarea and the strife about Gregories and Ambrose's Liturgy and such like 3. It was the Pastors and People of the same Church of Rome that St. Paul giveth the Precepts of Forbearing and Receiving Dissenters in things indifferent to And still mark that he wrote not only to the Laity but to the Rulers as is evident and therefore forbiddeth them such narrowing impositions being himself also a chief Pastor an Apostle and so declareth his own judgment as one that would himself make no such uncharitable impositions § IV. We deny not but some Churches have a while continued in laudable Concord notwithstanding such ensnaring Impositions But 1. It hath been but for a time and this Worm hath fretted them and it hath ended in their great detriment at least 2. And it was not by these means but by better causes notwithstanding these diseases so that as we answer the Question Whether a Papist may be saved so do we answer the Question Whether such Churches may have prosperous Concord viz. 1. If the Essentials of Christianity in Papists and of Communion in such Churches be practically held so as to be more powerful than their Contraries 2. But not by their Contraries but by overcoming them one may be saved and the other have peace even as we answer the Question Whether a Man may live that taketh Poyson or hath the Leprosie 1. Not if it be prevalent according to its malignant nature 2. But yea if it be overcome by natural strength or medicine § V. Chillingworth our powerfullest Disputant against the Papists hath fully laid down the true Principles of Christian Concord and the Causes of Schism even the making more necessary to Salvation or Communion than is necessary indeed And the famous Hales though too bold and sometime going a step too far hath said more against these true Causes of Schism with great Truth and Reason than the Authors of it can well bear But wisdom is justified of all her children CHAP. XI The Severity and Force of Magistrates denying necessary Toleration and punishing the Refusers of unnecessary uncertain suspected things will never procure Church Vnity and Concord but in time increase Divisions § I. HAles of Schism speaking of having two Bishops in a Diocess saith pag. 223. Neither doth it any way savor of Vice or Misdemeanor instancing in Austin's doing it ignorantly their punishment sleeps not who unnecessarily and wantonly go about to infringe it The most pious and wise Church Historians extoll the two peaceable Bishops of Constantinople that quietly bore the Novatian Bishops by them and geâ—tâ—y reduced Chrysostom's Followers the Joannites and dâ—spraise Nestorius and such other turbulent Prelates that persecuted them on pretence of zeal against Error and some of them proved more erroneous themselves § II. This crying out for the drawing of the Sword against those that differ in unnecessary things 〈◊〉 a great dishonour to the persons that tell men how conscious they are of their own insufficiency for their proper work and a reproach to the power of the Keys as if it signified nothing without the Sword And in all Ages Men of Ambition and Insufficienâ—â—y and Uncharitableness have been thus calling to the Magistrate to do all when yet in general claim they have set themselves far above him as being for the Soul when he is but for the Body § III. But Experience hath still confuted them and that which one Age or year thus built the next hath ordinarily pull'd down Not but that orthodox pious Princes are an unspeakable blessing to the Church and the want of such are ordinary causes of sin distraction and misery But such must know and do their proper work and not serve the pride and humor of ambitious ignorant Clergymen nor be their Lictors or Executioners nor lend them the Sword to execute their wills § IV. Constantine defended the
I. THere need not much more be said of this it is already proved That Christ himself hath in his Law made the terms of the Union and Communion of his Members As the same Nature that formeth all our members in the womb is also the placer and uniter of them Therefore that which is contrary to Christs terms yea which is none of them cannot prove the true terms and means of Concord § II. Indeed no man ought to be Excommunicated otherwise than by Ministerial Declaration and Judgment how far he hath first departed from Union and cut off or Excommunicated himself An impenitent Fornicator Drunkard Persecutor doth cut off himself from the favor of God and his part in Christ and the rights of his true Church Therefore the Pastors may declare that he doth so And if it become a Controversie either de facto whether he be such an one or de jure whether this be true the Pastors are the proper Judges so far as to resolve the Consciences of the Flock whether they must avoid that man or communicate with him And this I think the Rational Mr. Hales would not have denied though in his Treatise of the Keyes he asserteth only a Declarative and denieth a Judicial Power For his Reasons shew that he only meant that the Church hath no efficient Judgment to cut off any man from Christ or his Body further than he first cuts off himself And far be it from any Friend of the Church to say That it is the Bishops Office to undo Souls and to separate any from Christ save only by declaring and judging that they wilfully separate themselves and therefore requiring the People to avoid them and binding them over to answer their sin at the Bar of God The rest is the Devils work and the impenitent Sinners and not the Pastors of the Church § III. And what is said against the Magistrates unseasonable force will mostly hold against such undue Excommunication 1. If the person believe that he is cast out for not forsaking his duty to God he will rejoyce that he is counted worthy to suffer for righteousness sake remembring that Christ said They shall cast you out of their Synagogues And this will bring no man to Repentance § IV. And 2. Then the Pastors will fall under the imputation of Tyranny and Persecution and be taken to be Haters and Hinderers of Conscionable men and grievous Wolves that devour the Flock § V. And 3. The Parties Excommunicate will think that this doth not excuse them from the duty of worshipping God and therefore they will assemble by themselves for such worship and there they will think That they are a better Church than those that cast them out and perhaps may Excommunicate their Excommunicaters as the Bishop of Alexandria and Constantinople have done by the Bishop of Rome Or more likely despise their Censure and go on unless the Sword be drawn to suppress them to which only such Excommunicaters use finally to trust And then what will follow I have shewed before § VI. And indeed we need no greater proof of the ineffectualness of Excommunication in such cases than the open confession of the Users of it who if they have not an Act for Horning as they call it in Scotland or to imprison the Excommunicate or punish him by the Sword confess that their Sentence will be contemned which is most true § VII Yet sad Experience further assureth us That Papal Anathematizings yea and those of General Councils have been no small cause of Schism Confusions and Rebellions The History of this would fill a Volume Alas what did the Councils of Ephesus Constantinople Chalcedon and many others by their Anathemas The state of Syria Egypt and Abassia c. of those called Jacobites and Nestorians tells us to this day And these Thunderbolts have been the Popes great Engines to beat down Kings and batter Kingdoms It is the admiration of the world next to the success of ignorant Mahomet That a company of old Usurpers many of them successively being notoriously wicked men and so judged by Councils and their most flattering Historians should conquer Christian Kingdoms and Empires by sitting at home and â—ursing men and telling them St. Peter is angry with them and will keep them out of Heaven if they be not obedient to the Pope But men that will be the Slaves of Sin deserve to have their Reason so forsaken to make themselves the Slaves of Subjects § VIII Yet we are far from thinking That just Excommunication is of no use God would not have the Church of Christ to seem no better than the world it is a Society gathered out of the world by the sanctifying Word and Spirit and as holy devoted to the most holy God And he would have the Church Visible to be visibly the womb of the Triumphant Church or the Sheepfold of Christ containing such as have a seeming or visible right to salvation however Hypocrites do intrude And therefore the Keys of the Church should be much of Kin to the Keys of Heaven so that he that is taken in or shut out may seem to the Christian judgment of probability to be taken into or shut out of a right to salvation And therefore as impenitent wicked men should not be deluded in vain hopes by being received to Church Communion so neither should godly men for pardoned or tolerable infirmities be shut out of the Church while God continueth their visible Title to salvation much less a Lay-Chancellor or a Bishop Excommunicate Christs Members for not paying their Fees or for not kneeling at the Sacraments or for not submitting to unnecessary Impositions or for holding such Things unlawful or such like This way will never heal our breaches or unite the Churches CHAP. XIII Any One Vnlawful Vncertain Doctrine Oath Covenant Profession Subscription or Practice so imposed as necessary to Communion will be a dividing Engine § I. THis is proved in what is said before For a Conscionable Man will not wilfully and deliberately commit One Sin to save his Liberty Estate or Life though many Sins be worse For he that wilfully commits one virtually committeth many And as St. James saith Breaketh the whole Law § II. Yea though the matter of the Sin seem little a Believer will not think it a little Sin to do it deliberately and stand to it by Covenant consent The high places among the Jews seemed no great matter but a good man would not have Covenanted never to endeavor any Reformation of them § III. A peaceable Man will live quietly in a Church that hath many Sins and Errors but he dare not deliberately own or justifie the least I should communicate with no Church on earth if I thought all the Ministers or Peoples Sins yea all the Faults in their Prayers or Doctrine or Discipline were made mine by it I will live peaceably with a Church that hath a faulty Doctrine Liturgy and Discipline in Things Tolerable as
Sins are not within his Cognizance 3. To do the work of Parents Pastors Tutors or Physicians is no part of the Office to which he is appointed and authorized 4. But he may drive on all these to do their duties by due means 5. It is unlawful to seek to cure a lesser Evil with a greater That is to be numbred with the things which the Prince cannot do which he cannot do by lawful means or such as do more hurt than good 6. The Mischiefs before enumerated against the Princes Safety and Honour and against Love and Justice and Conscience and Religion are so great as that no Severity must be used which procureth them and doth not a greater good 7. The punishing of small Faults by great Punishments is Injustice and Unlawful 8. Abundance of Infirmities and humane Frailties and Errors are such as must be endured so they be but by Doctrine Love and gentle Reproofs rebuked and disowned without Punishments Ecclesiastical or Corporal else there will be no Love or Peace 9. Preachers must not be suffered to persuade Men from the Faith Love or Obedience of God in Christ against any Article of the Creed or Petition of the Lords Prayer or Precept of the Decalogue or any essential part of the Christian Religion 10. If such speak a damnable Error or Heresie by Ignorance or Heedlesness they must have a first and second Admonition and they 〈◊〉 repent But if they forbear not upon Admonition they do it studiously and wilfully and such are to be Silenced till they Reform because the Preaching of one that opposeth an essential Point of Religion will do more harm than good except among Heathens or where no better Preachers can be had 11. It will not be unmeet for the Rulers to draw up either a Catalogue of integral Points of Religion of great moment which all shall be forbidden to Preach or Dispute against or else a Catalogue of Errors contrary to such which none shall have leave to propagate But it is not every one that violateth the Law that is to be forbidden to preach Christs Gospel but lesser pecuniary Mulcts may be sufficient punishment to many and the bare denying them preferment or maintenance and casting them among the disowned that are but tolerated may be better punishment and more effectual in case of tolerable Faults than the more severe 12. Rulers should do much more to restrain from Evils than to constrain to Religious Duties And those Evils are of these sorts First Such as blaspheme God Secondly Such as draw the Hearers Souls into damnable Error or Sin Thirdly Such as tend to overthrow the Honour and Safety of the Governors Fourthly Such as tend directly to breed Hatred in men against each other and kindle the fire of Contention and Enmity Fifthly Such as draw men from the common duties of Justice towards Neighbors or Relations into Fraud and Injury 13. It is the greatest part of the Magistrates duty about Religion First To see Gods own Laws kept in Honour Secondly And to keep Peace by Church Justices among Clergymen and People that are apt to take occasion from Religion to abuse and calumniate one another 14. Yet Rulers may and must compel Persons that are grosly ignorant or erroneous to hear what can be said against their Error and for their Instruction As Parents so Magistrates may compel Children and Subjects to be Catechized and to hear Gods Word and may compel them to hear such Teachers as have the Rulers Licence either as Approved or Tolerated to Teach 15. Men ought not to be compelled to receive the Sacraments of Baptism or the Lords Supper by the Sword or Force because it is to receive a sealed Pardon of Sin and Donation of Christ and Life which no unwilling person hath right to or doth receive For to say I am unwilling is to say I receive not and so the reception of the outward sign is Hypocrisie Prophanation and taking the Name of God in vain 16. Yet those that being Baptized and at Age avoid Communion are after Admonition to be taken for Revolters so far and to be declared such as so far cast themselves from the Communion of the Church And the Christian Magistrate may well deny them many Priviledges in the Commonwealth which he should appropriate to sound persevering Christians 17. Places in Government Trust Burgess-ship and Votes in Elections of Governors and such like are best appropriated to the Approved part of Christians and some the Tolerated but never granted to Apostates proper Hereticks or any that are intolerable 18. Pastors of the Churches should not be constrained to give the Sacrament of Baptism or the Lords Supper to any one against their Consciences because First It is their Office to be Judges who is to be Baptized and to Communicate This is the power of the Keys Secondly If they may not judge of the very Act which they are to perform they have not so much as that judicium discretionis which belongeth to every man as a man and so must act brutishly Thirdly If they may administer against Conscience when they think it Sin the same reason would hold for all men to sin whenever a Ruler commandeth them that judgeth it no Sin what Bounds shall be set against absolute blind Obedience Fourthly Whereas the Objection is from Inconveniences As Then every Pastor may deny Men Sacraments I answer 1. So every Tutor Physician c. may abuse his Trust 2. Therefore men must have care whom they choose and trust 3. There are better Remedies than sinful slavery in the Minister even consulting with Synods of Ministers or where Bishops rule appealing to them 4. The persons that expect the Sacrament may have it from some other Pastor that is willing It is a less inconvenience that a single person remove or else communicate in another Assembly than that the Pastor whose Office is to use the Church Keys be enslaved to sin against his Conscience 5. We suppose that of ancient right the Church is not to have a Pastor over them whom they consent not to Therefore if the Church find themselves wronged by the Pastors Fact they have their Remedy They may admonish the Pastor and if he hear not tell the Bishop Synod or Magistrate for I am not now determining the case of superior Bishops but tell what is the actual Remedy where such bear Rule And if he hear not the Church Synod Bishop or Magistrate they may desert him and choose a fitter Pastor and yet neither Excommunicate nor Silence him but the same man may be more sutable to another Flock which will desire him They that object Inconveniences in this motion should consider First That a Mischief and Sin is worse than an Inconvenience Secondly That there is nothing desirable here without Inconveniences which may furnish an unwise Contender with Objections Thirdly That they that cry up the Canons and Traditions Custom or judgment of Antiquity Bishops Councils Fathers and the Catholick
more besides Origen sheweth 6. The Papists ordinarily take liberty to differ from the Commentaries of divers of the most Renowned of the Fathers 7. And the learnedst men of the Papists themselves do differ from one another 8. And no General Council that pretend to be the Judge of thesense of the Scripture durst ever yet venture to write a Commentary on it 9. No nor any Pope nor any by his appointment or a Councils is written by any other and by them approved as infallible By all which and much more it is evident That subscribing wholly to any Commentary will never unite the Churches of Christ Sect. II. And no wonder when that 1. God hath composed the Scripture of such various parts as that all are not of the same neceâ—sity or intelligibility but some are harder than the rest to be understood and many hundred Texts are such that a man that understands them not may be saved 2. And Pastors as well as People are of various degrees of understanding and all imperfect and know but in part Sect. III. Yet are good Commentaries of great use as other teaching is but not to be subscribed as the terms of the Unity or Liberty of the Churches Sect. IV. Nay those particular Expositions which General Councils the Pretenders to deciding judgment have made are not to be subscribed as infallible as I have before proved by the quality of the men and by their many Errors and contradicting and condemning one another CHAP. XVII A Summary Recital of the true Terms of Concord and some of the true Causes of Schism THE Sum of all that is said of Schism and Unity is this § I. Schism is an unlawful separating from one or many Churches or making Parties and Divisions in them and is caused usually either 1. By unskilful proud Church-Tyrants Dogmatists or Superstitious Persons by departing from Christs instituted terms of Concord the Christian Purity and Simplicity and denying Communion to those that unite not on their sinful or unnecessary self-devised terms and obey not their ensnaring Canons or Wills or malignantly forbidding what Christ hath commanded and excommunicating and persecuting men for obeying him 2. Or else by erroneous proud self-conceited persons that will not unite and live in Communion upon Christs instituted terms but feigning some Doctrine or Practice of their devising to be true good and necessary which is not or something to be intolerably sinful that is good or lawful do therefore cast off their Guides and the Communion of the Church as unlawful on pretence of choosing a better necessary way § II. 2. The necessary means of Unity and Church Concord are these 1. That every Catechized understanding person professing Repentance Belief and Consent to the Baptismal Covenant and the Children of such dedicated by them to Christ be Baptized And the Baptized accounted Christians having right to Christian Communion till their Profession be validly disproved by an inconsistent Profession or Conversation that is by some Doctrine against the Essence of Christianity or some scandalous wilful sin with Impenitence after sufficient Admonition And that no man be Excommunicated that is not proved thus far to Excommunicate himself And that the Catechized or Examined person be put upon no other profession of Belief Consent and Practice as interpreting the Sacramental Covenant but of the Articles of the Creed the Lords Prayer and Decalogue understood and the general belief of consent to and practice of all that he discerneth to be the Word of God 2. That in Church Cases and Religion I. The Magistrate have the onely publick judgment whom he shall countenance and maintain or tolerate and whom he shall punish or not tolerate nor maintain and never be the Executioner of the Clergies Sentence without or against his own Conscience and Judgment II. That the Ordainers being the senior Pastors or a Bishop or President with other Pastors which is to be left to the concurrent judgments of themselves and the people be the Judges of the fitness of the Ordained person to be a Minister of Christ and the said Pastors in their respective particular Churches be the Key-bearers or Judges who is to be Baptized and admitted to Communion in the Church and who not and not constrained to Baptize or to give or deny Communion there by the judgment of others against their Consciences though in case of forfeiture or just cause they may be removed from that Church or from the sacred Office III. That the People of that Church be the private discerning Judges who shall be their Pastors to whose conduct they will trust their Souls if not so far as to be the first Electors at least so far as to have a free consenting or dissenting power and they be not forced to trust their Souls with any man as a Pastor against their Consciences And that every man be the private discerning Judge of his own Duty to God and Man and of his sin forbidden and of his own secret Case whether he believe in God and Christ and purpose to obey him or whether he be an Atheist or Infidel or secretly wicked and so fit or unfit for Baptism and Communion so that though he be not to be received without the judgment of the Pastors yet he may exclude himself if conscious of incapacity and therefore that none be forced by corporal Penalties or Mulcts to be Baptized or to Communicate 3. That the Christian Magistrate make three sorts of Laws one for the approved and maintained Churches and Pastors another for the Tolerated and a third sort for the Intolerable I. And that a sufficient number of the ablest soundest and worthiest Ministers be made the publick approved maintained Preachers and Pastors And where Parish Bounds are judged necessary that all persons living in the Parish be constrained to contribute proportionably to maintain the Parish Ministers and Temple and Poor and to hear publick Teaching and to worship God either in that or some other Approved or Tolerated Church within their convenient reach or neighborhood II. And that the Tolerated Ministers tryed and licensed have protection and peace in the publick exercise of their Ministery though not Approbation and Maintenance III. But that the Intolerable be restrained by sutable restraints 4. That the Approved and Maintained Ministers be put to subscribe their Belief of Consent to and resolved practice or obedience of all the Sacred Canonical Scriptures so far as by diligent study they are able to understand them and more particularly of the Christian Religion summarily contained in the Sacramental Covenant and in the ancient Creeds received by the Universal Church the Lords Prayer and the Decalogue as it is the Law of Christ and expounded by him in the Holy Scriptures And that they will be faithful to the King and Kingdom and as Ministers will faithfully guide the Flocks in holy Doctrine Worship Discipline and Example of Life labouring to promote Truth Holiness Love Peace and Justice for the salvation of mens Souls
if it were Lay-Chancellors power of the Keys or Diocesanes too large Churches infiâ—â—â—â— speciei But I will not profess That I Assent Consent to and Approve all these Faults or any One of them nor will I Covenant never to endeavor in any place and calling to reform them nor justifie all that are guilty of them § IV. If one sin of Davids in numbring the People was so sorely punished and one sin of Achans of the Bethshemites of Uzzahs of Uzziahs of Josiahs of Ananias and Saphiras yea at first of Adam and Eve if one false Article of the Arians so troubled the Church of Christ and one Error about Images in Churches so corrupted the Church and made such sad work in Councils and Kingdoms a wise Man will not wilfully own one sin § V. And indeed Christ hath determined That he that breaketh one of the least of his Commandments and teacheth men so shall be called the least in the Kingdom of God Matth. 5. As he that truly believeth God in one thing will believe him in all which he knoweth to be his word so he that obeyeth him truly in one thing will obey all that he knoweth to be his Command whoever be against it § VI. And it is dangerous for a mortal Worm to set his law or will against his Makers and destroy or punish a Man for obeying God sufficient means should be used first to convince all Men that the thing is evil and that it is not God that doth command it else it is a setting up ones self above God and against him and saying You shall not obey God but me But when death cometh can you save either your self or him from the justice of that God whom both you should have obeyed CHAP. XIV Vnlimited Toleration will wrong and divide the Church § I. ALL sober Men are so far agreed in this that I need not say much of it no doubt there are intolerable Errors and Sins And though Mr. Hales and others say It is not Heresie unless it be wilful and we seldom know the wilfulness of another Yet in truth 1. It is not only formal subjective Heresie which maketh the Man an Heretick which we must resist and restrain but also material objective Heresie whatever be the Divulgers mind 2. And also there is a wilfulness which is Privative when the Will doth not its duty to discover Truth and Error as well as a positive willingness to err which Augustine saith That few or none can have And no mans will is wholly innocent in any culpable Sin or Error § II. Doubtless mans Conscience is not properly his Lawmaker nor his Law though some unaptly say so but only his discerning of that which is his Law no more than the Lawyers eye or reason or skill is the Law of the Land And therefore to have an erring Conscience taking that for Gods Law which is not is a Sin where it was possible to know it § III. And therefore Gods Law is not suspended but violated by mans Error God hath not as many sorts of Law as men have Opinions of it or Consciences in Error If a man should think that God bindeth him to kill steal slander c. this would not make any of these no sin but it would be no small sin in him that would father such wickedness on the most holy God and on his Law If an erring Conscience think that God forbiddeth our duty to Princes Parents Children Neighbors Justice Charity c. This would not dissolve any of his Obligations but be an added sin in slandering God Far be it from any sober man to think That the Magistrate must let all men do all the Evil which they will but pretend God and Conscience for § IV. Nor is the Papal Doctrine true or tolerable That Priests onely are for mens Souls and Princes but for their Bodies and Temporal Concerns and so that the Priest is as much higher than the Prince as the Soul is than the Body Indeed the Minister of Christ is to manage only the Word which worketh on the Soul by the way of Sense and not of the Sword but yet it is to be finally for the good of Souls that the Magistrate useth the Sword As the voice toucheth the Ear so doth the Sword the Flesh for the benefit of Souls either the sinners or other mens And verily he that saith otherwise and placeth the bonum publicum which is the end of Government meerly in the bodies prosperity dishonoureth and debaseth Magistracy and setteth Princes lower than Priests Parents or Friends Godly men that believe the vanity of things Transitory and Corporeal would have as low an esteem of the Means as of the End and so of all Civil Rules if they believed this But he that is the King as well as the great High-Priest of the Church for holy Ends and for mens Salvation hath made Princes his Officers subordinate to him for those Ends as well as Pastors I will not stand here to confute one or two Scotish Divines that have written against me for saying That Princes and Magistrates are now the Mediators Officers and have their Power from Him into whose Hands all Power in Heaven and Earth is given Sober Thoughts in wise Christians will save me that labour § V. And he that saith By me Kings reign and will have Kings to be the Churches Nursing-Fathers will not take it for an excuse of their neglect to say We were authorized onely for mens Bodies It is not equally for all that have Bodies nor for bodily Ends but to see to the execution of Gods Law by their Bie Subordinate Laws and Gods Laws all look to higher Ends. § VI. And he that said They are the Ministers of God to us for good meant true and durable good no doubt And when he saith That they are a Terror to evil doers he meaneth such as is contrary to the well-doing which they must encourage And is Piety and Christianity none of that He doth not except Blasphemy Idolatry Opposition to God Christ Holiness Heaven Justice or Charity from the number of Evil Works which are the worst of them It is therefore certain That Princes may and must punish many sins against the First Table and such against the Second as would shelter themselves under pretence of Conscience § VII But all the doubt is What bounds here to set where it is so dangerous to go too far And it is one of the most necessary Cases of Conscience which a Christian Prince hath to study and resolve in which he must neither hearken to a proud envious idle worldly Clergy nor to injudicious Zealots nor to licentious Hereticks but avoid Extreams § VIII In short what I have before said decideth the Case 1. He must Tolerate no one Sin how small soever which is within his Cognizance and Jurisdiction which he can indeed cure by righteous means which will do more good than hurt 2. Thoughts Heart Sins and Secret