of men must involve their Records in a greater danger of miscarriage than others Besides that this dependence on Records must in the natural course of things make the Government weakest in the later Ages when we are warned to expect the vices of men most outragious and most needing a restraint which makes it very unlikely to have been Gods pleasure that it should depend on them Which will weaken all our Adversaries Arguments either from the less or from the obscurity of those Primitive Records § IX AND that way of tryal must needs be less popular because it resolves it into more Ancient Histories and greater variety of Learning than can reasonably be supposed in popular capacities If therefore Episcopacy alone and Episcopacy in the modern sense be the only Succession of the Apostles which has been kept uninterrupted to our present times the consequence must then be certain that there can be no Apostolical Power in our present Age which is not derived even from our modern Episcopacy § X FOR it is further observable 5. That even for this Negative consequence it is sufficient that the Argument be deduced from the only substitutes that are extant in the Age to which it is applied that whatever is not done by them cannot be supposed to be done by the Apostles themselves For what if the Presbyterian Government had lasted as long as our Adversaries pretend it did What if the Apostles had lest the form of Government different in several places in some Episcopal in some Presbyterian as a very learned Person does conjecture Dr. Stillingfleet Iren. And what if the Presbyteries of those times had indeed the power of Ordination and intended to give that Power to all the particular Presbyters that were ordeined by them then All this would only prove that the Presbyters so ordeined in those times had indeed the Power of Ordination and that all who were then ordeined by them were validly ordeined But it does not therefore follow that the present Ordinations by simple Presbyters is valid also unless it can be still proved that such a Succession of Presbyterian Government has been continued down to our present times and that the Power of Ordination is now also conferred by them on simple Presbyters as they conceive it to have been then If all the Successions of those Presbyterian Governments be long since extinct as most certainly they are now if they ever were in being then it is as vain to revive a title from them now which is impossible to be received from them as it would be to revive the title of the Julian Family to the Roman Empire And therefore they being uncapable of having Successors on this supposition it must follow that the Episcopal Successions are the only Successions now remaining of the Apostolical Power so that neither Presbyters nor Presbyteries can now have any more of the Power of the Apostles than what they can derive from the Episcopal Successions CHAP. XXII The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion THE CONTENTS 4. This Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first dividers of the several parties had never a power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their Circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first Ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were Ordeined § VIII § I 4. THIS Authority is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion This is a plain Corollary from the former Propositions For from thence it has appeared that no Authority can be expected in this present Age but in that Communion where the Succession of Apostolical Power has been continued to this present And that this Succession has been continued to our days in no other but the Episcopal Communion I conceive to be a thing so notorious as that I think our Adversaries themselves will not deny it They do not that I know of pretend the like uninterrupted Succession in any other form of Government § II HENCE it plainly follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government or in any other Communion at present must be derived from the Episcopal especially of that Age wherein the several parties began I suppose therefore that within less than two hundred years since that there was no Church in the world wherein a visible Succession was mainteined from the Apostles times to ours which was not Episcopally governed I suppose also that the first Inventers of the several Sects were at first Members of these Episcopal Churches and received both their Baptism in them and all the Orders they received I need not use that Argument here that they must therefore have received their Authority in the Episcopal Communion because there was then no other Communion that could give this Authority I think our Adversaries themselves as many of them as pretend to a regular Ordination or a valid Succession will not deny but that what Orders were received by them were actually received by their Forefathers in the Episcopal Communion and by Episcopal Authority Let us therefore see whether the Orders so received can make valid what they now do in their several Separations that is whether they can ratifie their Ordinances or their Sacraments or any thing else that concerns them as a Church that is as a Society priviledged with Spiritual Priviledges § III AND here I do not intend to take the advantage I might against the exercise of that Power by these Persons in their separate condition which they had before really and validly received from a just Authority which was able to give it them I make no exceptions as to the validity of that exercise of it much less as to the Canonicalness of it which I know our Adversaries will much less regard The uttermost that can be made of that is only this that such Persons did receive a Power for their own Lives which must expire with their Lives which this present Generation is not concerned for If therefore I can shew that they of this Generation have nothing from them by which they can justifie the validity of their
which he is known to believe as a condition necessary in his circumstances to his being a Bishop he must think himself obliged to intend This observation will prevent all the Arguments by which themselves are perswaded that the Power of Ordination ought to be given to every Presbyter which they think the Bishop ought to will also and therefore that he ought to be presumed to will it if he be presumed to will as he ought It is his actual good intention that we are concerned for at present And that must not be presumed from Principles disputed but from Principles already and notoriously granted by him § VIII 4. THEREFORE in this way of judging of the actual intention of those Bishops who ordeined the first Separatists there can be no more prudent and secure measure than to consider the Notions then prevailing concerning the power of Presbyters especially those which were fundamental to all the Canons that were then in force as the Rules of Practice of this power These are most likely to have been taken by them for the measures of their Conscience And indeed the Canons were introduced into practice by a universal consent either when they were made or when they were received And they who received power yet were obliged to those Canons as to the exercise of it and therefore if they were either perswaded of the truth of the prevailing Opinion or were true to the obligations they had taken for the observance of the Canons these we have reason to presume to have been the measures of their consciences and therefore we have also reason further to suppose their practices such as might agree with these on supposition that they acted conscientiously And though possibly some particular persons might have entertained singular Opinions yet it is not so secure to presume his conveyance of Orders to have been fitted to his singular Opinions not only because it is not so easie to presume that any particular Person did follow a singular Opinion when the generality were so agreed in another nor only in regard of that resignation of Judgment which in those Ages was thought excellent in point of conscience on which account many thought themselves obliged to follow the sentiments of their Superiors in contradiction to their own but also because the validity of Succession depends on the practice and sense of the Generality of all places and Ages but especially of all Ages And though a particular person might intend differently from the rest of his Brethren yet he could give no more than himself had received and what that was depended on the intention of his Ordeiner which again will be best presumed from the sense of the Generality Only the supreme power is that which can never be presumed to have been confined At least this is a presumption that the Bishops then acted according to the Opinions and Canons then generally received unless they expresly declared themselves to the contrary Their silence is so far from being an Argument of their being of another mind as that it is indeed a very strong presumption in this case if in any of their consent If they continued silent when it so much concerned them to speak their minds that people might know the power they intended to give the Persons ordeined by them they must expect that people would understand them according to the received Opinions and therefore we have reason to presume that they themselves were desirous to be so understood § IX BUT whatever were the sentiments of the primitive Church concerning the Identity of Bishops and Presbyters originally whatever also they thought concerning the fitness that the power of Ordination should be given to bare Presbyters yet it is notorious that the contrary Opinion and Practice prevailed in the Church universally when the first dividing Presbyters whoever they were were ordeined and for many hundred years before even very near the times of the Apostles if we may believe the concurrent suffrages of the most learned Antiquaries of our Adversaries They do not deny and indeed the matter of Fact is too notorious to be denied by men of any ingenuity that whether they ought to be so or not yet actually Bishops were then distinguished from Presbyters and distinguished in this very particular that the power of Ordination was reserved as a Prerogative of the Bishop and never communicated to simple Presbyters Nor was it only their practice to do so but their Judgment that they ought to do so on account of Conscience It is very notorious that at least a little before the Reformation Aerius and the Waldenses Vid. Alphons à Castr. adv Haeres verb. Episcop and Marsilius of Padua and Wiclef were condemned for Hereticks for asserting the Parity of Bishops and Presbyters And it is withal as notorious that every Bishop was then obliged to condemn all Heresies that is all those Doctrines which were then censured as Heretical by that Church by which they were admitted to be Bishops and how odious also the name of Heresie was then even on account of Conscience I mention even these because whatever their Doctrines were in other things and how far soever they might go to justifie a separation from them who taught those Doctrines yet our Protestants themselves do not pretend to any Succession in these Western parts where themselves received their Orders but what was conveyed to them even by such Bishops as these were nor do I use their Authority for proving the Truth of their Doctrine in their censure of this particular Heresie but only to clear what their actual intention was in the Orders given by them for which it is sufficient that they themselves thought them true whether they were mistaken or not in thinking so However this is so acknowledged to have been believed and practised in the Ages we are speaking of as that the very Presbyterians themselves do charge them with differing herein from the sense of the first times because the Bishops had and exercised a Superiority over Presbyters which they conceive they had not in the Apostolical times They therefore call them Humane Bishops in opposition to the Scripture Bishops whom they conceive not to have been distinct from Presbyters And could the Bishops be no Scripture-Bishops because they were distinct from Presbyters And were not their Presbyters as much distinct for the same reason from Scripture-Presbyters because they were distinct from Bishops If this consequence hold why do they challenge the power and priviledges of those Scripture-Presbyters when they are so different from them If it do not why do they asperse the sacred Order of Episcopacy in modern Ages with such a deviation from the Primitive Rule § X HOWEVER this being notorious that the Bishops of the later Ages did actually think they ought to be distinct and distinct in this very particular of Ordination how is it probable that they would give all that power to Presbyters that should leave no distinction between them that
Damasus wherein he so extols the See of Rome seems to have recommended him to the counterfeiter of the Roman Council under the name of Gelasius not long before the time of Isidore Mercator as the Authority of that Council in Isidore's Collection might recommend him downwards as soon as that bundle of Forgeries had once prevailed universally All the use that I make at present of these insinuations is that if it be suspicious whether the men who then followed these Principles did embrace them out of a sincere sense of their Truth then they cannot be presumed to have been Principles of Conscience Which if they were not this is sufficient to shew that they are not fit measures of the Power that was actually given by the Bishops of that Age. § VI AND though they had been received more universally than it appears they were among the Multitude yet how is it likely that it was so received among the Bishops themselves Is it likely that they would be generally so partial to an Opinion so destructive of their common rights as Bishops Is it likely that they would be so partial when there was no evident prevailing consideration in point of Conscience that might induce them to it when it was a matter of dispute even among disinterested Persons and debated by Arguments and Authorities at least as considerable on their side as on the others If any particular Bishops had been so strangely partial against themselves and thought themselves obliged in Conscience to be so yet sure there is no reason to make use of it as a presumption to judg of the minds of them who had not otherwise declared their minds expresly and to judg of them universally And yet it has appeared that the whole use of this opinion for judging what Power was actually given is only as a presumption and even this presumption is useless concerning others than the Bishops None but they pretended to the Power of giving Orders at least not to the exercise of that Power And therefore whatever any else thought besides the Bishops is very impertinent to our present purpose because it can give us no assurance what was actually intended by the Bishops and it is only their intention by which we can in prudence judg what Power was actually given by them § VII BUT let us suppose that which in prudence can never be supposed that the Bishops of those Ages were universally of this opinion that their own Order was the same with that of Presbyters yet it does not thence follow that they must have given Presbyters the Power of Ordination It neither follows from the Notions of those times nor from the reason of the thing And sure we cannot better judg of a matter of this nature than by one of these two ways It does not follow from the Notions of those times For even they who thought them to be the same Order yet made them different degrees and that not only from the custom of the Church but by Divine Right also But it could not have appeared how they could distinguish them even in degree but by allowing something in practice to the Superior degree as a peculiar Prerogative and there was nothing thought so a So Epiphanius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hâ—res lxxv 4 And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ib. And St. Chrysostome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 init Hom. ii in 1. ad Tim. p. 289. peculiar to the Episcopal degree as this power of Ordination This was the very particular excepted by St. Hierome b Quid enim facit exceptâ Ordinatione Episcopus quod Presbyter non faciat Ep. 85. ad Euagr. himself even where he most of all pleads for parity in other things I know there are of our Brethren who understand St. Hierome's words not of the original right of appropriating ordination to them as left to them by the Apostles but of a priviledg actually allowed them by the practice of the Church in that Age wherein he wrote which I shall not now dispute It suffices that he made no mention of Ordination among the instances of their parity nay that he expresly excepts this particular among his other proofs of the identity of their Office without telling expresly on what right it was that he made the exception which were very fair occasions to induce them to believe that he did not intend to give them the power of Ordination especially when it was withal notorious and confessed by himself that he lived in the Communion of a Church wherein Presbyters were debarred from the exercise of this Power It suffices that they who in that Age followed his Authority were not obliged by any of their designs in promoting his opinion to understand him of a parity in the power of Ordination nay never seem actually to have understood him so whatever other sense has been applied to him by those who have more subtilly considered him in our present Age. It is not St. Hierome's true opinion that I am now concerned for but that of those who might then have followed him If they never understood him of a parity between Bishops and Presbyters in the power of ordination If they did not really believe them equal in this particular if they actually believed that this distinction of degree was from the Apostles and that this power of ordination was the peculiar Prerogative of the Superior degree then certainly they who then followed St. Hierome might notwithstanding if they maintained these things also together with his opinion thinks themselves obliged never to give the power of ordination to the Presbyters that were then ordeined by them So far our Brethren are from any solid ground of a presumption that such a thing was ever intended for them § VIII AND as this consequence was far from being owned in the actual sense of those times so neither will it indeed follow from the opinion of these Persons that simple Presbyters had any right to a power of Ordination Though they believed Episcopacy to be the same Order with Presbytery yet their acknowledging a difference in degree was enough to hinder them from confounding the peculiar rights of the several degrees and this we see was taken for the peculiar right of Episcopacy Though they conceived no new Character to have been imprinted in the Consecration of a Bishop yet withal they confessed that the Character of his Presbytery was extended And why may not this extension extend his Power also at least to some Acts to which he had not Power before Nay certainly this very thing was intended by them that it should actually do so And if so then certainly this extended Power must have implied an addition of Power above what was in it before it was so extended Whence it will plainly follow that this Power of Ordination to which the Episcopal Character was extended was wanting in them whilest they were simple Presbyters that is before it was so extended And therefore they who were of
belong to him as a Presbyter though he were not also a President of the Presbytery and therefore cannot take it for a Prerogative of his Office as President That it is therefore from some such a Presbytery as this that they must derive the validity of their Orders appears from the Principles already premised that no other Presbyteries can make out their Succession from the Apostles that particular Members of even these Presbyteries cannot do it alone in a separation from them that Multitudes of such particular Persons though meeting together cannot make up such a Church among them as were requisite to attest the Orders of Persons ordeined to the rest of the Catholick Church who maintein correspondence with them § XIII CONSIDERING therefore these Episcopal Presbyteries only as Presbyters and the Bishop himself as acting herein by no higher a power than that of an ordinary Presbyter yet even so no Orders can be valid but those which were conferred by the prevailing vote of even such a Presbytery at least those are invalid which are given by the votes of a smaller over voted part of them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government though it were doubtful whether the greater part might dispose a right common to them all without the consent of every particular yet it hardly can be doubtful whether a smaller part can dispose of such a common right though over-voted by a greater number of suffrages than their own Though it may be thought reasonable that some reserved cases of that nature wherein the whole Society were deeply concernâ—d should not pass without the unanimous suffrages of every individual Member yet as there is no Justice antecedently to compacts that any individuals should dispose of the rights of others though less considerable than themselves till by the general acts and compacts of all whereby Polyarchical Societies are most naturally settled such general rules are agreed on by which some particular Members may for peaces sake be allowed to dispose of the common rights of their Fellow-members without their express consent in the particular but by vertue of their general consent once given to such general rules so neither is there any reason in prudence that where unanimous consent cannot be had and it is therefore necessary that one part yield to the other the greater should be swayed by the smaller part The fundamental rule of all this publick justice is that where there is a necessity of a choice the publick be preferred before private interests that therefore it is very just to bear with injuries to private Persons when they cannot be avoided without injuries to the publick Which will in generosity oblige a smaller part to yield to a greater but can on no terms oblige the greater to yield to the smaller because indeed the interest of the greater part is more the publick interest than that of the smaller § XIV BESIDES the reason of all compacts of this kind of referring their differences to a publick decision is the presumed equality of the decision above what would be among the interessed Persons themselves and the power to execute what is resolved on beyond the resistance of those against whom the cause is decided And therefore if we should again suppose men free as they were before these compacts I am speaking of we have reason to presume that they would settle this power of deciding their differences in such hands where there might be presumed less danger of corruption and where there were the greatest power to execute their own decrees And both these reasons give the preference to these major votes above the smaller part It is to be presumed that it is not so easie to corrupt a greater as it is to corrupt a smaller part And when it is necessary that the decree be executed the power of the greater is greater than that of the smaller part where the particular Subjects of power are supposed equal as they are in our present case And though it be very possible in after cases that it may so fall out that the greatest right may sometimes belong to that side where there is the smallest power yet we have reason to believe that the only reason why it comes to be so is the unexpectedness of revolutions to which humane affairs are obnoxious which could not be so much as probably foreseen when the rules of such Societies were first agreed on Otherwise it is reasonable to presume that at the first constitution of those rules they would chuse the greatest power and interest for the fittest seat of Authority because they would by that be best secured of the execution of the Sentences given by them And therefore where we may presume the greater power lay at the passing of those compacts and where they who made those compacts had reason to see the greatest power would always be there we have also reason to presume that they would intend to place the greatest Authority § XV AND this is a reason which might in all probability induce them to resolve that the major vote should prevail through all succeeding generations because the major vote in the case I am speaking of must inseparably carry with it the greatest power And this is a reason that alike concerns all by whom the Government were at first settled whether it were by compacts of the Parties themselves who were to be governed or whether the Government were placed over them by a power who had a Jurisdiction over them antecedently to their own consent There is the same reason why such a power should decree that the smaller number of suffrages in opposition to a greater number should be null in Societies to be established by him as that the Parties themselves should at first agree that it should be so The reasons now mentioned proceed alike in both cases Which I therefore observe that our Adversaries may perceive that as to the case of which I am now speaking it will come to the same event whether the power of the Presbyteries do come from the consent of the particular Presbyters or whether it proceed immediately from the Divine institution Still it is to be presumed that things are to be decided by the vote of the greater part where nothing is otherwise expresly determined because this way of determination is so certainly for the publick interest for which we have as much reason to presume that God would be solicitous as that the Presbyters themselves would be so § XVI BY this it appears even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government how invalid as well as how irregular it must be for a smaller over-voted number of the Presbyters to undertake to dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries whether as acting by themselves or as acting in Presbyteries made up of multitudes of such Presbyters as had been severally over-voted in the Presbyteries to which each of them did at first belong Now that the power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter
is there any reason for them to oppose God and the Church as they usually do on this and other occasions If the Church's Authority be received from God then what is done by her is to be presumed to come from him the same way as what is done by any mans Proxy is presumed to be his own act and as what is done by an inferior Magistrate by virtue of his Office is presumed to come from the supreme Which will especially hold as a presumption that is where there are no clearer proofs of the supreme Magistrates mind being contrary to that of the inferior than our Adversaries can pretend to for proving the inseparable union of these powers by Divine institution If they were then united by God because they were united by the men who represented God why are they not disunited by God now when men alike empowered by him have disunited them Why should they not oblige God in one case as well as the other especially when there is nothing in the Commission it self that implies confinement in one case rather than the other and when the whole reason of judging is taken only from the actual practice how is it possible that any actual practice can prescribe against the power that introduced it that it may not introduce a different practice as arbitrarily as it introduced this If there had been a distinct Authority for making the union of these two powers inseparable distinct from that which united them only in practice or if the same Authority of men which united them in practice had declared Gods pleasure to be that they should for ever be so united though they might reverse the Authority of their own practice yet it might not be in their power to evacuate their own Declarations because those are supposed to belong to an Authority greater than their own and antecedent to it and therefore may rationally be supposed such as may null all future acts that are contrary to it But such distinct Authority or distinct Declaration our Adversaries cannot pretend in our present case § XXV AND if they could prove this inseparable Vnion of these two powers by the Divine appointment our Adversaries would do well to consider whether it would be more for their interest or their disadvantage that is whether it will not rather follow that they are no Presbyters at all who have received Episcopal Ordination that they have no power of administring the Sacraments because it is certain that they have not received the power of Ordination than that they must have received the power of ordeining other Presbyters because they have received the power of administring the Sacraments The Negative consequence is as unavoidable from the inseparableness of these two powers as the Affirmative that is it is as certain that where one of those powers is certainly not given there nothing is given because it cannot be supposed to be given alone as that if one be given the other must be given also As therefore it is certain that the Ordeiners intended to reserve the power of Ordination from the Persons ordeined Presbyters by them so it will follow by this principle that if the whole power was not intended none was so And if what was not intended was not given and what was not given was not received and the power of Ordination was not received then neither could the power of administring the Sacraments be received also And if so then let them be called by what name they please yet really they will be no Presbyters at least not in the Scripture-sence if either of these powers be essential to such a Scripture-Presbyter And then in vain do they challenge the power of such Presbyters when they are not those Presbyters to whom those powers belong And certainly it is much more certain and prudent to argue from the nature of the power given to them that they are Presbyters in the Scripture-sence who have the power given them which is supposed to belong to Scripture-Presbyters and on the contrary that they are not Presbyters in the Scripture-sence who have not that power given them than that they must have the power because they have the name and that intended in the Scripture signification Names are imposed arbitrarily to signifie what men please and if they please by the name Presbyter to signifie him whom the Scriptures call so yet still it is to be supposed to signifie that sense which they understand to be the sence of Scripture though they be mistaken in the sense of it And it is certain that the name cannot alter the nature of the power which is given to them though the nature of that power may alter the justice of their title to the name If they have less power given them than should belong to Scripture-Presbyters it must certainly follow that the name would be given them improperly and certainly our Adversaries themselves cannot think it just that they who are improperly called Scripture-Presbyters should claim the priviledges of them who are called so properly § XXVI INDEED if the nature of the powers were mutually inseparable it would be reasonable to argue that where one was given both must be so or if at least on one side this inseparableness held it were just to conclude that the other power must be given if this be that from which that other is inseparable but not on the contrary that the separable power must be given because that power is given from which it is supposed to be separable And on this account there is indeed some colour of reason to presume that where a higher power is given the inferior is given also because usually the Inferior is included in the Superior though it be not always so But it will by no means follow that a Superior power must follow that which is Inferior because here can be no pretence either of inseparable connexion or of inclusion Now this is plainly the case here All that our Adversaries can directly prove to have been given to their first Predecessors who received their Orders in the Communion of the Church is only a power of administring the Sacraments in their own Persons But the power of giving this power to others is certainly a power of a higher nature than the power of administring in their own Persons If therefore both these powers be essential to a Scripture-Presbyter and they cannot prove that any more than one of them was given to their Predecessors neither by any express donation nor by any inseparable connexion with that which was expresly given it will clearly follow that they were not made Presbyters in that sence which our Adversaries understand to be the sence of the Scriptures and therefore that they cannot claim the priviledges which they conceive due to Scripture-Presbyters And for my part I do not understand a more prudent Rule for distinguishing when the negative way of arguing is seasonable from this Topick that neither power is given because it is
of the reasons that required them § XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV The unreasonableness of this way of arguing § XXVI There were then circumstances proper to that Age which required particular condescension § XXVII Though the Negative Argument be not good yet the Positive is that the actual claim of Governours then is a good Presumption that they had a right to the Power so claimed by them § XXVIII Persons extraordinarily gifted at length made subject to the ordinary Governours of the Church § XXIX XXX XXXI This derivation of Power rather from Governours than from the People agreeable to those Precedents whom the Primitive Christians were mâ—st likely to imitate § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV A way proposed for accommodating the several interests concerned in Ordinations according to the practice of those times § XXXVI XXXVII The Apostles unlikely to confer this right of Government on the People if left by God to their own Liberty according to the Notions which then prevailed among the Christians § XXXVIII Remarks tending to the satisfaction of the lovers of Truth and Peace 1. This way of arguing from the actual establishments of God as it is much more modest so it is also more secure for finding out the right of Government than any conjectures we can make from the reason of the thing § XXXIX XL. 2. Though the People had this inherent right of Government originally yet it cannot exclude a right of God who may when be pleases resume this right into his own hands § XLI 3. If the people ever had such a right originally yet all that has been done since for alienating that right which could be done § XLII p. 423. CHAP. XX. 2. This Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God by the Mediation of those men to whom it was at first committed by him The Negative to be proved That none can be presumed to have a call from God without at least an approbation from the Supreme visible Governours § I. 1. It is in reason and by the Principles of visible Government requisite that this Negative be granted for the Conviction of false Pretenders to a Power received from God 1. It is necessary that Pretenders should be discovered § II III IV. 2. It is also requisite that the means of discovering Pretenders be notorious to all even to ordinary capacities § V VI. 3. These notorious means for discovering Pretenders must be common to all Ages of the Church not proper only to that of the Apostles § VII 4. Hence it follows that God left them to the same ordinary means of judging concerning the right of Spiritual Governours as had been used in judging concerning the right of their temporal Superiors § VIII IX 5. By this Rule of judging concerning Spiritual right the same way as we judg concerning temporal none can be presumed to have this Power but they who have received it from them to whom it was at first committed § X XI 6. This Inference will especially hold when access to the Supreme is most difficult § XII XIII This is the case of Ecclesiastical Government § XIV Application to the Principles of a Modern Writer § XV XVI 2. Our Brethren must be obliged in equity to grant this way because they cannot pitch on a more certain way for the tryal of Pretenders § XVII 1. They cannot do it by deriving their Authority from God immediately § XVIII XIX XX. 2. They cannot do it by pretending to receive their Authority immediately from the Scriptures independently on the Act of their ordinary Superiors § XXI An Objection answered § XXII p. 438. CHAP. XXI 3. This Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived from those men to whom it was at first committed to the Age we live in without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from thâ—se who had Authority to give it them § I. 1. This Authority could not be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own times Neither by their own Persons nor by their deed of Gift nor by their Writings § II. 2. It hence follows that the only way they could use for conveying this Authority to others after their decease must be by appointing sufficient Substitutes who might act for them after their departure § III. 3. The same reasons which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey this Power to any who did not live in their own Age do also prove it impossible for any of their Successors to do so § IV V. 4. This Negative Argument will only hold concerning the only substitutes of the Apostles and concerning them it will hold That they who have not received Power from them who are alone substituted by the Apostles to convey their power to others cannot at all receive any power from the Apostles § VI VII VIII IX 5. That this Negative Argument applied to any particular Age will hold concerning the only substitutes remaining in that particular Age. Bishops were the only substitutes of the Apostles then remaining when our Brethren began their Innovations § X. p. 476. CHAP. XXII 4. The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first Dividers of the several parties had never a Power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were ordeined § VIII p. 483. CHAP. XXIII The Objection concerning the Opinion prevailing in the modern Schools that Bishops and Presbyters differed not in Order but Degree Answ. 1. It seems rather to have been Interest than Conscience that inclined men to the belief of this Opinion This cleared from a short History of this Opinion § I II III IV V. Answ. 2. Though this Opinion had been received more universally than it appears it was by the Multitude yet it is not likely that it would be so received by the Bishops upon whose intention the validity of the Orders conferred by them must depend § VI. Answ. 3. Though the Bishops of those Ages had been universally of this Opinion yet it does not thence follow that they must have given the Presbyters ordeined by them the Power of
ordeining others It does not follow from the Notions of those times § VII Nor from the reason of the thing § VIII IX The Principles on which these Persons proceeded in making on◠Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery did not oblige them to believe that the Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters § X XI XII XIII XIV Answ. 4. They who then held this Opinion did in all likelihood neither intend nor think of any consequence from it prejudicial to the establishments then received § XV XVI p. 491. CHAP. XXIV This supposition That the Bishops had the right of Presiding over Ecclesiastical Assemblies sufficient for our purpose § I. 1. In regard of that Power which must be granted due to him even as President This proved by these degrees 1. Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no Power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated § II. 2. No act can be presumed to be the act of that Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies § III. 3. No Assemblies can dispose of the right of such Societies but such as are Lawful ones according to the constitutions of the Societies § IV V. 4. The Indiction of the Assembly by the President is a right consequent to the Office of a President as a President and a circumstance requisite to make the Assembly it self Lawful § VI VII 5. The Bishops have always been the Presidents of Ecclesiastical Assemblies even as high as our Adversaries themselves do grant the practice of Presiding Presbyters § VIII IX This invalidates the Orders of our Adversaries § X. This was a right which no Bishops how great Assertors soever of the Identity of their Order with that of Presbyters ever did renounce or could renounce without making their Government unpracticable § XI Though the Bishops had received their Power from their Election by men yet that would not suffice to make valid any acts of the same men without their consent after their Election § XII XIII This right of Presidency might hold though the whole right of their Power had been purely Humane § XIV But supposing that right Divine all that men can do can be only to determine the Person not to confine the Power The reasoning here used will proceed though Bishops had been made by Presbyters alone without the concurrence and consecration of other Bishops § XV. The Primitive Bishops seem indeed to have been made so by Presbyters without Bishops § XVI p. 508. CHAP. XXV 2. The Nullity of the same Ordinations proved even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government from the right which Episcopal Presbyteries ought to have in giving Orders as they are considered as Presbyteries § I II. This proved by these degrees Though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is the correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination § III IV V VI. 2. Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in whith he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the Exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them § VII 3. The Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders Applied to single Presbyters § VIII To whole Presbyteries made up of over-voted single Presbyters § IX X XI 4. No Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in any particular Episcopal Church as Presbyterian without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries § XII A smaller over voted number of Presbyters cannot validly dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries § XIII XIV XV. The Power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter is a right of the Presbytery in common by the Principles of Aristocratical Government § XVI XVII XVIII XIX An Objection Answered § XX XXI XXII Another Objection Answered § XXIII XXIV Retorted § XXV The reason of the Retortion given § XXVI p. 525. CHAP. XXVI 2. The Episcopal Communion to which every one is obliged to joyn himself as he would secure the ordinary means of his own particular Salvation is the Episcopal Communion of the place wherein he lives whilest he lives in it § I. This proved against the several sorts of the Non-Conformists according to their several Principles § II. 1. As to the Presbyterians and those who acknowledg an Obligation of Government antecedently to the consent of particular Subjects And that by these degrees 1. That by the obligation of Government in general all those particulars must be obliging without which it cannot be practicable § III. 2. Many of the Presbyterians themselves do acknowledg the determination of particular circumstances and the Application of general rules to particular cases to belong to the Office of Ecclesiastical Governours § IV. 3. It is absolutely necessary for the practicableness of Government in general that every Subject know his Governour and him particularly to whom be in particular owes Obedience § V. 4. The means whereby every particular Person may be convinced to whom it is that he in particular owes Subjection must be such as may be presumed notorious to the whole Community and such whereof others may judg as well as the Person particularly concerned and by which they may judg as well concerning his Duty as their own § VI. 5. The Authority of these means must be from God § VII VIII Two Consequences inferred from hence 1. Positive That they must be under a Divine Obligation to own the Authority of these Jurisdictions whilest they live within them § IX 2. Negative That from this Divine Authority of Jurisdictions they must find themselves obliged to forbear all opposite Communions or Assemblies within those Jurisdictions § X XI XII Application made particularly to the Presbyterians § XIII 2. As to the Independents who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedently to the voluntary obligation of particular Persons § XIV XV. That there is really a Power of Government in the Church § XVI That this Power is not derived from the Multitude § XVII XVIII p. 547. CHAP. XXVII 2. That the nature of this Obligation to submit to all unsinful conditions of the Episcopal Communion is such as will make them guilty of the sin of SCHISM who will rather suffer themselves to be separated than they will submit to such conditions The Notion of SCHISM as it is only a breach of correspondence not sufficient for my purpose § I. As it is a breach of a Body Politick it is Application to our Adversaries § II. That by the Principles
reason of the thing § IX This performed by two degrees 1. It is God alone that has the right of disposing the Spiritual benefits here conveyed § X XI XII The reason of the Adversaries mistakes § XIII 2. It is none but he that can give Possession of them § XIV 2. From the actual establishment of God No such Authority actually conferred upon the People § XV XVI XVI The weakness of the Argument from bare Primitive Precedent for proving a right conferred shewn from the many condescensions of those times and the Prudence of the Reasons that required them § XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV The unreasonableness of this way of Arguing § XXVI There were then circumstances proper to that Age which required particular condescension § XXVII Though the Negative Argument be not good yet the Positive is that the actual claim of Governours then is a good presumption that they had a right to the Power so claimed by them § XXVIII Persons extraordinarily-gifted at length made subject to the ordinary Governours of the Church § XXIX XXX XXXI This derivation of Power rather from Governours than from the People agreeable to those Precedents whom the Primitive Christians were most likely to imitate § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV A way proposed for accommodating the several Interests concerned in Ordination according to the Practice of those times § XXXVI XXXVII The Apostles unlikely to confer this right of Government on the People if left by God to their own Liberty according to the Notions which then prevailed among the Christians § XXXVIII Remarks tending to the satisfaction of the Lovers of Truth and Peace 1. This way of arguing from the actual establishments of God as it is much more modest so it is also more secure for finding out the right of Government than any conjectures we can make from the reason of the thing § XXXIX XL. 2. Though the People had this inherent right of Government originally yet it cannot exclude a right of God who may when he pleases resume this right into his own hands § XLI 3. If the People ever had such a right originally yet all that has been done since for alienating that right which could be done § XLII § I 3. THEREFORE no other Ministers have this Authority of Administring the Sacraments but only they who receive their Orders in the Episcopal Communion This I shall endeavour to prove by these Degrees 1. That the Authority of Administring the Sacraments must be derived from God 2. That though it be derived from him yet it is not so derived without the mediation of those men to whom it was at first committed 3. That it cannot be so derived from those men to whom it was at first committed without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them from those first times of the Apostles to ours at present 4. That this Authority is to be expected no where now but in the Episcopal Communion § II 1. THE Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God I do not only mean that it must be derived from God as all other things as well as Authorities are derived from him who is not only the Supreme Prince but the first Cause of all things Nor do I mean only that it must be from God the same way as all other even Secular Authority must be derived from him at least Providentially though the Power of Government were originally never so much at the disposal of the Persons to be governed For whatever the Creature has originally the disposal of it must be supposed at first derived from God But yet in a way of Providence God does also frequently dispose of Governments which had been otherwise in the Creatures liberty to dispose of as in those rights which are gotten by just Conquest and Prescription where the rights of Government are certainly disposed of by Providence without any possible pretence of consent in the Persons obliged to submit to it For the right of the Creature where-ever it has any is not to be understood so as to derogate from the right of God to dispose of them as he pleases whatever right they have as it must necessarily be derived from him if it be indeed any right at all so that derivation does not rob him of any of that which he had before It is to be understood not Privatively as they say but Accumulatively My meaning therefore is that this Power of administring the Sacraments must be so derived from God not as to exclude the mediation of such men who have received it in a Succession from him but so as to exclude all right originally derived from the Creature as far as the Creature is capable of such a right originally in contradistinction to God That is that no men have a right to Government in Ecclesiastical affairs but by a particular donation from God not by vertue of that general right which God has given every one by his general Providence to take care of himself and which therefore every individual Person may for himself and much more whole Multitudes may by common consent commit to others § III THE consequent whereof will be that all Ordinations and all Administrations of the Sacraments derived from any Multitudes or Persons on account of their general right of governing themselves without an express donation from God are not only irregular but invalid and such as can neither in Conscience oblige any Subjects to submit to them nor encourage any who are otherwise willing to submit to expect any benefit from them And my design in proving this Proposition is particularly to oppose not the Independents only but those others also who by the badness of their Cause have been forced upon their Principles and do assert a power in the mutinous Communalty to legitimate the Calling of those Pastors which they have been pleased to set up for themselves in opposition to their original Superiors on what account soever they assert it to them besides this of an express donation which I do not know that any yet have pretended to whether in regard of that intrinsick right every one is supposed to have for his own Government in Spirituals where he is not expresly imposed on by positive Provisions though withal he have not that intrinsick right either confirmed or enlarged by any such Provisions or in regard of their Election according to them who conceive the Elect only capable of constituting a Church and that according to the popular Notion of that word of Election § IV I AM sensible how needless my present undertaking is for proving the first Dividers of the several Parties to have been guilty of Schism For if any other form of Government be lawful in the Church besides Democracy that is indeed if it be in the Power of the Multitude to alienate their own Power by their own Act and if they cannot it is impossible
they are said neither to have been of men nor by men Gal. i. 1 Eph. iv 11 2 Cor. v. 20 They are reckoned among the gifts of Christ upon his ascending up on high They are called Embassadors for God and in Christs stead And it has always been reckoned among the Prerogatives of Majesty to have the sending of his own Embassadors Nay it was counted so peculiar a property of an Apostle to be sent by God himself as that St. Paul insists on it as an Argument to vindicate his own Apostleship against the false Apostles who quarelled at it Gal. i. 11 12. 1 Cor. ix 1 that he had received nothing from the other Apostles themselves and that himself had seen our Lord that he might receive his Authority from him Thus far therefore there appears no Precedent of any Authority either received from the Multitude or given to the Multitude by Christ himself who as yet alone had power to give it § XVI NOR do I think that our Adversaries themselves will pretend that the Apostles received their Authority from the People Yet so unwary they are in their arguing for the Authority of the People as that they produce such Proofs as must conclude this if any thing If the Peoples Expostulation with St. Peter concerning his baptizing of Cornelius had been an Act of proper Jurisdiction it must have been an exercise of Jurisdiction over St. Peter himself And if so they must in reason be supposed to have had some power of punishing him either by deposing him from his office or by suspending him from the exercise of it or at least by Authoritative withdrawing from him yet so as still to continue in the same good condition wherein they were before which can hardly be understood without a weakening of his Apostolical office For no proper Jurisdiction can be understood without a proportionably proper power of inflicting punishment in case of misdemeanour And if they will not own this that the People had a Power over the Apostles they must at least let go all their proofs which prove this if they prove any thing Which will extremely streighten them in their pretended Scripture Precedents For where-ever they find the People doing any thing without the Apostles which is the only Case wherein they could shew the proper extent of their own Authority they will find the Apostles themselves concerned which must therefore oblige them to understand such actings not to have been by way of Jurisdiction but of Expostulation § XVII WHEN was it therefore that this Authority was given to the Multitude By whom was it given to them who had a just Power of giving it them Was it afterwards given them by the Apostles who had hitherto held it independently of them If so it were well our Brethren would remember to insist only on such Proofs as are later than the date wherein they think it was given them and on such Proofs which speak more home to their design than those which are antienter than those times wherein themselves conceive this conveyance to have been made and which they must therefore acknowledg unconclusive But so far were the Apostles from giving away that Power to the Multitude which they had never received from them as that we find generally the Ordinations mentioned in the Scriptures performed either by themselves or by Persons Authorized as themselves were either by God himself or by them not by the People Tit. i. 5 Act. xiv 23 Act. vi They ordeined Elders in every City By them the order of Deacons was instituted and the Persons promoted to the Order They visited whole Countries and settled and confirmed the Churches they constituted what Officers and gave them what degrees and prescribed what Rules of Government they pleased according to their own Prudence and the suggestions of the Holy Ghost without consulting the Authority of any others which they could not have done if they had either acknowledged any self originated Power in the People or immediately given them that power which themselves had received immediately from God It cannot possibly be understood how the Rules of a Democratical Government could ever have permitted them to act so arbitrarily as it is plain they did in those first beginnings of Christianity § XVIII THERE were indeed many prudent reasons proper for those times which might prevail with the Apostles to desire the Peoples consent in the administration of their Government though the obliging validity of what was done had not depended on their Authority The Church was then a Body linked together only by an awe of Conscience not by any other external coercion And though now that the truth of Christianity and the Authority of the Apostles are sufficiently confirmed all are obliged to submit to the Rules prescribed by them as they would secure their happiness which will not leave them to that Liberty nor consequently intitle them to that right in the Government before they submit to it as our Brethren fancy yet before this conviction had prevailed on the minds of men it could not have been prudent for them to exercise the utmost extent of that Authority which did really belong to them Our Adversaries themselves will at least acknowledg the Apostles to have been infallible whence it will follow that their word alone ought to have been taken in Controversies then started at least where there appeared not evident reason to the contrary But we plainly find that even themselves durst not venture their Authority on so hard a tryal Even in probable things we do not find that they required their Auditors assent without such reasons as the matter would afford that is at least without probable ones And generally we find them so laying the stress of their persuasion on those reasons as if their Authority had been no reason at all Therefore in the Controversie concerning Circumcision Act. xv the Elders and the Multitude convened together with the Apostles to give their judgment concerning it and that in a Case which was to be decided by the Holy Ghost But what need had there been of all that trouble if the Apostles Authority alone had been sufficient for this decision The Holy Ghost spoke by the Apostles alone And could the whole Synod after all their diligence in enquiring and debating the Truth in that matter pretend to any greater Authority Was it likely that the ordinary Presbyters much more that the Laity themselves should have had any thing revealed to them which had been concealed from the very Apostles But we find the whole matter debated by reasons and rational applications of the Mystical sense of the Old Testament as if no new revelation had been pretended § XIX THE like might have been observed from the debates with St. Peter concerning his Preaching to Cornelius and with St. Paul concerning his Preaching against the obligation of the Ceremonial Law The lawfulness of Preaching to the Gentiles and of forbearing the externals of the Law were
they would give that power of Ordination to them which they took for the most characteristical distinctive for the most incommunicable Prerogative of the Bishop over Presbyters Is it probable that they would have been so partial against their own common interest to betray the honour of their Order Is it probable that they would do so when they were as firmly perswaded that it was their right in Conscience as well as that it was their interest that it should be so Nay have we not all the assurance on the contrary that either Interest or Conscience can give us that those Bishops never intended to give the power of Ordination to the Presbyters ordeined by them nay that they intended on the contrary to reserve it from them And is not this as great an assurance as can be expected in such a matter CHAP. XXIII What influence the Opinion which prevailed in the modern Schools That Bishops and Presbyters differed not Order but in Degree might have upon the intention of the Ordeiners of those times THE CONTENTS § I The Objection Answ. 1. It seems rather to have been Interest than Conscience that inclined men to the belief of this Opinion This cleared from a short History of this Opinion § I II III IV V. Answ. 2. Though this Opinion had been received more universally than it appears it was by the Multitude yet it is not likely that it would be so received by the Bishops upon whose Intention the validity of the Orders conferred by them must depend § VI. Answ. 3. Though the Bishops of those Ages had been universally of this Opinion yet it does not thence follow that they must have given to the Presbyters ordeined by them the power of ordeining others It does not follow from the Notions of those times § VII Nor from the reason of the thing § VIII IX The Principles on which those Persons proceeded in making one Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery did not oblige them to believe that the Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters § X XI XII XIII XIV Answ. 4. They who then held this Opinion did in all likelihood neither intend nor think of any consequence from it prejudicial to the establishments then received § XV XVI THE only considerable Objection that I can foresee in this matter is the opinion which then obteined among some of the modern School-men that Bishops and Presbyters were all one Order and differed only in degree that the consecration of a Bishop did not give him a new Character but extend the old one which he had received before when he was ordeined Presbyter and the influence that this opinion might have on the Practice of those Bishops if any such there were who then believed it to give the whole essential power of Bishops to those whom they ordeined Presbyters yet so as to restrain them in the practice of it by their Canonical Obedience I do not take all the advantages I might against this opinion as it was maintained in those Ages to shew that it is too suspicious that it was rather pique than Conscience that then brought men to it Whenever it was vented it seems to have been vented with particular design and particular provocation Not to ascend to the more knowing times for in truth I am not desirous to touch the reputation any men have gained in the World where it may be spared with the interest of Truth that is indeed where errors have not been introduced into the World by the Authority of men of undeserved reputation and there sure none can blame me for complying with so unpleasing a necessity The first time that it was retrieved after St. Hierome seems to have been in the eighth Century and then with a particular design upon the Chorepiscopi whose power was then maligned as derogatory to the Ordinaries And the wisest course for reducing them and withal the least invidious was thought to be not so much directly to magnifie the power of the Ordinary as to magnifie the dignity of them who had been subject to the Chorepiscopi which they endeavoured not only by degrading the Chorepiscopus to the orders of a Presbyter but by extolling the office of a Presbyter to an equality in some regards with the Bishops to whom they the Chorepiscopus himself as well as other Presbyters were obliged to pay obedience as indeed he was All this dispute was nothing but pure design and how very disingenuously it was managed appears from the several Epistles of antient Popes counterfeited in that Age for this very purpose to prove the Chorepiscopi to have been simple Presbyters which may justly make us jealous of the integrity of the same party in this other principle which they advanced in opposition to it § II HAVING therefore gained their design in the subversion of this Office and the Bishops themselves not being hitherto concerned to oppose this opinion whilest it was so favourable to their interests and whilest it added to their power by the ruin of so considerable a Rival though we have reason to believe that this usefulness of the Opinion must have endeared it to the Affections of those who had served themselves by it yet we find little mention of it from that time till it became again useful That was when the Popes aspired to a Superiority above all Bishops and Councils Then it was that Dispensations and Delegations grew frequent so that nothing was performable by the Bishop by vertue of his Office but what was communicated to simple Presbyters by Papal Delegations This as it highly tended to the advancement of the Roman See so we may have reason to believe that all the Arts of the Roman Court and its Parasites were employed in promoting it And there was no more likely policy for it than this to make use of the same way for the subversion of the Episcopal Power which the Bishops themselves had before been so favourable to when it was used against the Chorepiscopi Which was a policy of the same kind with that which that politick See had made use of in their disputes with the Patriarch of Constantinople They then seemed not so much concerned for his equalling himself with them as for his preferring himself before the other Patriarchs This they knew to be a more popular Art to make him odious without discovering their own ambition And in our present case we know that this was the reason that made the Papal Bishops even in the Council of Trent so averse to the asserting the Divine institution of their own order And this I believe our Brethren themselves will confess to have been a very corrupt design And yet in these unhappy times whilest this ill design was driving on the School-men flourished of whose suffrages they are so proud in this particular § III AND as the Pope was thus interested to oppress the Episcopal Authority whilest it was capable to stand in competition with him so when afterwards the generality
by this Opinion as it was mainteined then if they did not think the peculiarity of this Power sufficient to constitute a distinct Order What matter is it whether they owned the word or no so long as they owned the thing which our Adversaries may possibly think more properly imported by the word Whatever the word do most properly signifie yet when we use it as we do now to judg of the meaning of those who used it we are to take it as they understood it how improperly soever they understood it And we have the rather reason to do so in this case because the word had no notorious sense antecedent to those Ages which they might be obliged to mean and which they might therefore be presumed to mean where they did not very expresly declare the contrary The terms of Ordo and Gradus as they were terms of Art were intirely introduced by themselves unmentioned in the Sacred Writers no nor as the constant language of the Church neither of the Catholick Church nor even of the Latine Church for many of the most ancient Ages And why might not they be allowed to impose their own signification on their own terms § XII IF our Adversaries say that the allowance of this Power only to Bishops will make them a distinct Order then they must confess that the Authors we are speaking of were of our mind in the thing and of theirs only in the use of the words which they will find will stand them in no stead for the present design of proving their Succession They must then say that those Authors make Episcopacy really a distinct Order with us though they were pleased to call it only a distinct Degree with them But if they grant that this Power is not sufficient to make them a distinct Order we shall not be very solicitous whether they use that word so long as they acknowledg this Power This Power of Government being appropriated to the Bishops will in the consequence appropriate the Power of Ordination to them not only as Ordination implies the giving of the Power of Government to inferior Governours but also as it is requisite for the ends of Government not to give simple Presbyters a Power of giving their Power to others for fear of that independence which would in course follow thereupon even in the exercise of that Power Whatever our Adversaries may think of this reasoning in it self yet certainly they cannot deny it to have been agreeable to the actual Notions of those times which is as much as I am concerned for at present § XIII AND if we would according to another Notion of those times found the Power over the Corpus Christi Mysticum on the power over the Corpus Christi verum yet even so there was room left for asserting the Power of Ordination to the Bishops alone For though the Power over the Corpus Christi verum was taken for the highest exercise of Power that was communicated to Mortals yet even in that exercise of Power there were several Degrees which might very probably incline them to acknowledg a distinction rather in Degree than in Order between the Persons distinguished by them and this distinction of Degrees was sufficient for appropriating the Power of Ordination to the Bishops alone Even in the exercise of that Power he who had a Power to give his Power to another must be supposed to have a greater degree of that same Power than he who had it only for his own Person and so that it must expire with his Life Whether this was a distinct Power or a distinct Degree of the same Power seems to have been the main dispute between them who disputed whether Episcopacy were a distinct Order or Degree from Presbytery Whoever was in the right it is sufficient for my purpose that they were both agreed in this that this Supreme whether we call it Power or only Degree of Power was appropriated to the Bishops so that it was never so much as given to ordinary Presbyters And what matter was it whether they called the Character of the Bishop a new one oâ— an extension of the old one which he had when he was made Presbyter These were also terms first brought into general use by themselves from the private use of St. Augustine and it was in their pleasure how they would use them It is sufficient for me that the Power of ordeining others was not grounded barely on the Character it self but on the Character as extended and therefore could not be validly challenged by them who had the Character alone given them without its extension § XIV AND though the Power of Jurisdiction over the Corpus Christi Mysticum for term of Life were grounded on the Power over the Corpus Christi verum for time of Life also so that he who had the Power over the Corpus Christi verum could oblige the Mystical Body to what terms he pleased and set up what Jurisdiction he pleased over them when they could not have the true Body without him yet so it self there was a right reservable to the Bishop over the true Body which might both oblige Priests to a dependence on the Bishop and the whole Church to a nearer and more necessâ—ry dependency on Episcopacy than on the Priesthood The Priests not having the exercise of their Power over the true Body but by appointment of the Bishop must oblige the Mystical Body to a greater dependence on the Bishop than on Priests in the exercise of this common Power For this will it put in the Power of the Bishop to deprive the Mystical Body of the true Body if he should forbid the Priests the exercise of their Power though against their consent and will withal put it out of the Power of the Priest to oblige the Mystical to any dependence on them in opposition to the Bishop by denying them the true Body when the Bishop requires them to give it because their presuming to refuse it in such a case must be an invasion of the Bishops right and must consequently infer a Nullity in what they do without right to do it But the Priests not having this Power given them of giving their Power to others this must in regard of this dependence of the Mystical Body on the true Body free the People from a dependence on the Priesthood which cannot secure them of the true Body in another generation And on the contrary the Bishops having this Power given them and to them alone this will oblige the Mystical Body to depend on them for a Succession because they alone can continue the administration of the true Body to them through all Ages of Succession § XV AND as these Doctrines are very reconcilable with that of making Episcopacy and Presbytery one Order on the Principles now mentioned so they were certainly the actual sense of those who followed that Doctrine in that Age. Most certainly they who were of this opinion could not
intend to follow the Doctrines I do not say of the Aerians who had been reckoned in the Catalogues of Hereticks S. Augustini Epiphanli long before their own times but even of the Wiclevists and Waldenses who had been more lately censured for mainteining the equality of Bishops and Presbyters They who know how odious the name of Heretick was in those days and how express condemnations of them were required from Persons who were to be admitted to preferments and how these Catalogues and Councils who had censured these Persons were the Standards whereby such Persons were obliged to judg who were Hereticks they I say cannot believe that the Bishops of that Age could have kept either their Communion or their Preferments if they had been of our Adversaries mind in asserting the Order and Character of Episcopacy to have been the same with that of Priesthood And they must still remember that it is by what was mainteined by them with a good conscience that we must judg what Power was actually designed for the Presbyters ordeined by them We must not therefore understand these Opinions so as to think that the Persons who mainteined them in the Ages we are speaking of intended to exclude all difference between the two Offices And if any difference were acknowledged it must have been this of Ordination which St. Hierome himself the principal Author of this Opinion had acknowledged for such an inseparable peculiar Prerogative of Episcopacy And therefore we have all the reason we can desire to presume that even Persons of this Perswasion in that Age did intend to reserve this Power from the Presbyters that were ordeined by them § XVI FOR it is particularly considerable that this case of theirs is not capable of that Apology for submitting to an unjust Government which is usually and I think very justly made use of to excuse St. Hierome He indeed seems to have thought that in the Apostles Age the Presbyters had a greater interest in the Government of the Church than was allowed them in his own But this did not hinder his submission to the Government even of his own time though it had not been so just nay did not hinder him from thinking that it might then have a very just though an only humane right It was his sense not of the Government in the Apostles times but of the Government of his own times that concerned his present practice But that which these Persons taught who made Bishops and Presbyteries of the same Order concerned not only the Apostles Age but their own They thought them still to be not only de Jure but de Facto of the same Order and therefore could not think themselves under any higher Duty to their Bishops than what was consistent with their being of the same Order And therefore if this had allowed them a Power of Ordeining others why did they not challenge that Power why did they suffer the Bishops to ingross it to themselves and to secure their present Vsurpations to posterity for ever by an unquestioned peaceable prescription Could not any one bold Spirit be found who would stand up for the honour of his Order Could neither interest nor conscience neither animate some to give a preâ—edent of contradicting it they do not seem in those Ages to have been generally so meâ—k and so fearful of disturbing the publick Peace for what they thought to be their right Mighty quarrels were then engaged on for matters of incomparably more trivial concernment and where withal they had less interest either to provoke or animate them than here And if indeed they had thought of any such consequences as they must have thought if their meaning in this Assertion were such as our Adversaries are apt to understand it to have been how came it to pass that it escaped the censures of their then present Superiors Is it likely that it could have escaped those censures in such an Age wherein policy was their principal study and the principal employment of their zeal was the maintenance of their present establishments Did none of these Persons who mainteined these Opinions ever come themselves to be Governours And if their Opinions altered with their Interests must they not then have been conscious of the ill consequence and mischievousness of what they had mainteined formerly If none of them had been conscious of these things from their own experience yet sure their jealousie and the momentousness of the thing would have made them suspicious though they wanted solid grounds if they had only likelihoods And these suspicions were sufficient to have awakened all their diligence for suppressing them When I consider these things I cannot but think that the Persons who then mainteined this Opinion concerning the identity of the Order of Bishops and Presbyters must needs have been very far from thinking of any consequence prejudicial to their present establishments much less from attempting any thing in practice till pure necessity as well as opportunity forced them upon it They did not therefore pretend to excuse Presbyters from the least instance of their Canonical Obedience to their Ordinary even of that Obedience which was prescribed by the Canons of those times So far it is from being probable that they intended to give them the peculiar prerogative of the Bishop the Power of ordeining others nay so far do they seem from so much as judging it fit in Conscience that this Power should be given to them who were then ordeined Presbyters And yet from what has been already said it appears sufficiently that nothing short of their actual intentions to give them this Power can suffice to legitimate our Brethrens present Ordinations CHAP. XXIV The Nullity of the Ordinations of the Non-Conformists proved from the Power of the Bishops even as Presidents over the Presbyteries THE CONTENTS § I This Supposition That the Bishops had the right of presiding over Ecclesiastical Assemblies sufficient for our purpose § I. 1. In regard of that Power which must be granted due to him even as President This proved by these degrees 1. Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no Power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated § II. 2. No act can be presumed to be the act of that Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies § III. 3. No Assemblies can dispose of the right of such Societies but such as are lawful ones according to the constitutions of the Societies § IV V. 4. The indiction of the Assembly by the President is a right consequent to the Office of a President as a President and a circumstance requisite to make the Assembly it self lawful § VI VII 5. The Bishops have always been the Presidents of Ecclesiastical Assemblies even as high as our Adversaries themselves do grant the Practice of Presiding Presbyters § VIII IX This invalidates the Orders of our Adversaries § X. This was a right which no
his own Order that can perform the Ceremony to him because we suppose him to be supreme and there cannot be two such in one Society And if he must depend on the supreme powers of the neighbouring Societies for an investiture so that he could not be validly invested without them this would both be dangerous in suspicious times and would besides be very prejudicial to the liberty of the particular Society for which such a Governour were concerned § XVI AND therefore I for my part am so little solicitous for any consequence that may hence be inferred to the prejudice of my Cause as that I am apt to think that this must have been the way observed at first in the making of Bishops how absolute soever I conceive them to have been when they were once made and how invalid soever I think the actings of Presbyters would be which were done without his consent after his Consecration though they were those very Presbyters by whom he had been Consecrated And I wish our Adversaries had Authorities suitable to their confidence either better than conjectures or if no better yet more ancient than the time of St. Hierome whose contemporary he was who wrote the Commentaries under the name of St. Ambrose much more than the very exceptionable testimony and Age of Eutychius This seems best to agree with the absoluteness of particular Churches before they had by compacts united themselves under Metropolitans and Exarchs into Provincial and Diocesan Churches as the word Diocese was understood in the Eastern parts in the language of that Age. And this seems to have been fitted for the frequent Persecutions of those earlier Ages when every Church was able to secure its own Succession by its own power without depending on the uncertain opportunities of the meeting of the Bishops of the whole Province And the alteration of this practice the giving the Bishops of the Province an interest in the choice of every particular Colleague seems not to have been so much for want of power in the particular Churches to do it as for the security of the compacts that they might be certain of such a Colleague as would observe them whose Communicatory Letters they might therefore not scruple to receive when they had first by their own act satisfied themselves of the trustiness of his Person before his Consecration However the matter was I cannot but think that it was the interest of the neighbouring Bishops in the correspondence of every particular Bishop that first occasioned and procured their interest in his Election Nor can I tell how the Succession could have been so secure otherwise unless every Bishop had named and constituted his Successor in his Life time for which they had precedents in the Successions of the Philosophers in imitation whereof I have already observed how probable it is that these Ecclesiastical Successions were framed But then withall as that way was uncertain so when the Philosophers failed to nominate their own Successors then the Election was in the Schools But this would even then only warrant such acts of those Presbyteries which held correspondence with their own Bishops and with the Episcopal Communion but in these modern Ages it can only excuse those to whom the power was returned by the Bishops who had been peaceably possessed of it for many Centuries before This I note that it may not be drawn into a precedent now any further than it is fit and reasonable CHAP. XXV The Nullity of the same Ordinations proved from the right of Episcopal Presbyteries as Presbyteries THE CONTENTS 2. Even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government from the right which Episcopal Presbyteries ought to have in giving Orders as they are considered as Presbyteries § I II. This proved by these degrees 1. Though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is that correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination § III IV V VI. 2. Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in which he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them § VII 3. The Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders Applied to single Presbyters § VIII To whole Presbyteries made up of overvoted single Presbyters § IX X XI 4. No Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in any particular Episcopal Church as Presbyterian without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries § XII A smaller over-voted number of Presbyters cannot validly dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries § XIII XIV XV. The power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter is a right of the Presbytery in common by the Principles of Aristocratical Government § XVI XVII XVIII XIX An Objection answered § XX XXI XXII Another Objection answered § XXIII XXIV Retorted § XXV The reason of the Retortion given § XXVI § I BUT 2. There is also another just exception against the validity of our Adversaries Ordinations even from the right of Aristocratical Government and that is from the right of their Fellow-Presbyters as well as themselves If we should allow the right of Ordination to Presbyters as Presbyters as our Adversaries desire yet that will not justifie the validity of the Ordinations of single Presbyters no nor of a smaller part in opposition to the greater by which it is over-voted And our Adversaries cannot defend their Ordinations at present any better than by the single acts of particular Presbyters over-voted by the greater part of the Presbyteries of which they were originally Members Their first Ministers which began the separation were much the smaller part of the respective Presbyteries to which they were related And though they might if they had continued in the Communion of the Church have had their single votes in all the acts of Government and the disposal of all the Offices which by the practice then obteining were allowed to the whole Presbyteries yet they could never have obteined that the Offices disposed of by their single votes must have been validly disposed of and ratified by the rest by whom they were over-voted And sure they cannot expect to be gainers by their unpeaceableness that their single votes must be esteemed of greater value out of the Church than in it that they who could not have made Presbyters in the Church against the prevailing vote of their Brethren should be allowed to make as many as they please on condition they will divide from their Brethren and make themselves the Heads
of a popular party § II THIS is not allowed in any Societies of the like nature Though the Aldermen of Corporations have a power together with the Mayors to dispose of the Offices belonging to their respective Corporations yet if the whole Table shall meet by themselves in separation from the Mayor and in opposition to him however they might over-vote him if he had been present and their assembly lawful yet what they should do in the Case we are now supposing would be a perfect Nullity and unobliging to the Corporation But if any single Alderman should separate from all his Brethren also and should of himself undertake to dispose of the things or Offices of the Corporation could any of our Brethren themselves approve them in it Could they think the Offices so disposed of by them validly disposed of Could they think the Corporation obliged to ratifie them And yet it is strange that they should not see how like this Case is to that of their own Predecessors The first Ministers they had ordeined in the separation were ordeined by such Presbyters as these and by such an act as this now mentioned And their whole Succession since that time has been mainteined generally on no better a Title This representation of their case may possibly affect some popular capacities better than the naked reasons But that the more judicious among them may see that my desire it to deal fairly and candidly with them and not to represent their cause more invidiously than it deserves or to take any advantage that may be taken from a false representation of it I shall endeavour to reduce the reason to a more close way of management under the following considerations which I shall intreat our Adversaries to consider impartially § III 1. THAT though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is the correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination By his being a Presbyter in the Catholick Church when he is once made I do not mean that he may canonically exercise his Power in all particular Churches where he may have occasion to come without dependence on the respective Governours but that the exercise of his power in his own Church is to be ratified over the whole Catholick Church in general that they are to suppose the Sacraments administred by him to be validly administred and that therefore they are not to rebaptize Persons baptized by him when they come to live among them nor to refuse their Communion to such to whom he thinks fit to give it nor to receive to their Communion those who are excluded from his and that they are also so far to ratifie the Authority received in his own Church from those who had power to give it him as that if they think fit to permit him to exercise his power within their Jurisdiction they do it without pretending to give him a new Authority but only a new Licence and that where-ever he can exercise his Authority without Canonical injury as in Heathenish or Heretical Countries where no Canons do oblige ratifie all his acts of power the same way as if he had performed them within his own Canonical Jurisdiction This is more than is observed in civil Societies One Country is not bound to confirm the censures of another they are neither obliged to banish their exiles nor to receive their Countrimen to the same priviledges among themselves which they enjoyed in their own Country nor to receive their Magistrates to exercise power among themselves without a new Commission which may give them a new power which the Authority of their own Country was not able to give them § IV AND the reason why I level my discourse against the power that the Presbyters of our Adversaries may pretend to on account of their being Presbyters of the Catholick Church is because this is the only pretence that they can plausibly make for the validity of what they do Canonical Licence they cannot so much as pretend to for exercising their power within the Jurisdictions of others without their leave And it has already appeared that they can make out no Succession from the Apostles but what must originally have come from Episcopal Ordination That therefore they should expect that the exercise of a power received from the Bishops yet exercised within their Jurisdiction without the Licence of the Bishops nay contrary to their express prohibition should be counted valid how unlawful soever must be from the irrevocableness of the Authority at first received by them and the unconfinedness of the design of that power antecedently to those Canons by which it was afterwards made irregular in its practice Were it not for the nature of the unconfinedness of this power they could not pretend to any right to exercise it out of the Jurisdiction of him who gave it them nor even within that Jurisdiction without his leave And therefore if this will not do it they can have nothing that can defend their Vsurpations from being invalid as well as uncanonical § V AND that this correspondence of the Catholick Church with that particular one in which he was ordeined is the true reason why all other Churches are obliged to ratifie the acts of every particular Presbyter will appear if it be considered that by his Ordination in his own particular Church he can have no Jurisdiction given him over any other which is not under the Jurisdiction of that particular Church from which he has received his Orders And therefore the reason why they are obliged to confirm his censures cannot be any Authoritative deference they owe to him such as Subjects owe to even their fallible Superiors even in matters wherein they think them actually mistaken yet so to practise as if they thought them not mistaken but purely their own actual conviction concerning the reasonableness of the thing it self because they either know or presume it to be fit that his censure should be confirmed But this reason of the thing would not hold were it not that his Church and theirs are in those things the same and as they give the same advantages so they require the same qualifications which whoever is presumed to have in one cannot by them by whom he is presumed to have them be at the same time presumed to want them in the other In other Societies where the priviledges conferred are proper to the Society the qualifications are so too And therefore though one Society be really satisfied that a Subject has deserved well of another and that he has deservedly received his reward for his eminent deserts from that Authority which had power to give him it and therefore that he has a just title to a reward yet are they not obliged in any reason to give him the same honour in their own For the nature of these Societies are so little
must be a right of the Presbytery in common according to our Adversaries Principles who conceive Government to be a right common to them I do not know whether our Adversaries themselves will think it necessary for me to prove If the supreme visible Government of the Church be the right of such Presbyteries in common not of particular Presbyters singly considered I cannot conceive how such a Government can be practicable unless the valid investiture of subordinate Governours be also appropriated to them § XVII I AM not concerned whether they will here allow the power given at the Ordination of a Presbyter to be a proper power of Government It suffices at present that the power given to particular Presbyters is as properly a power of Government as that is of the whole Presbyteries The power of the whole Presbyteries is only an Aggregate resulting from the valid Succession of the particular Presbyters whereof it consists And the power of Administring the Sacraments which is given to particular Presbyters at their Ordination is that on which their power of Government is grounded That is the reason which obliges all private Persons to submit to the Presbyteries and to all their lawful impositions because God has put it in their power to exclude refractory Persons from the ordinary means of Salvation And as far as this power of administring the Sacraments is granted to particular Presbyters when they are ordeined Presbyters so far also it is put in their power to exclude private Persons from the Sacraments by refusing to perform their Office to them Only because this exclusion by a particular Presbyter does not hinder other Presbyters who have as great a power as himself who should exclude one from performing their duty to a Person so excluded and the exclusion does oblige the Person excluded to submission no further than as he cannot hope for the benefit of the Sacraments without the consent of his excluder therefore it can only be to the whole Presbytery that every Member of a Church can be obliged to submit because it is the Presbytery alone that can oblige all to ratifie their censures so that the Sacraments cannot at all be gotten without their consent They can â—â—lige their own Members to ratifie them by vertue of the Subjection which each of them owes to the whole Community And they can oblige all other Churches and Presbyteries to ratifie their censures by vertue of that correspondence which all Churches and Presbyteries are obliged to maintein with each other on account of their common interest But still this does not hinder but that the power of particular Presbyters must be of the same kind with the power of the whole Presbyteries though it be not of the same extent which on the Principles now mentioned is sufficient to appropriate the disposal of it to the common right of Government § XVIII AND as by the former Argument it has appeared that de facto no such power was actually designed for them by their first Ordeiners as is at present exercised by our Brethren in their separation so by this later Topick it appears that it does not de jure belong to them by vertue of any thing given them by the Episcopal Presbyteries though we consider them as our Brethren are willing to consider them in this act of Ordination only as Presbyteries or at the utmost only as Presbyteries with a President which cannot make any substantial difference much less can the honour of presiding lose the President any of that honour which belongs to him as a single Presbyter Which I therefore observe that our Brethren may see how unjustifiable their Ordinations are upon any terms Though this power had been designed for them by their Ordeiners or though their being made Presbyters by their Ordeiners did as they think confer this power upon them really how little soever it was designed for them yet neither of these pretences can be available if their acts were not valid acts of the Presbyteries If they were not they could not give what they did intend to give them because they could not confer a valid legal title to that which was not their own to give So far must they be in such a case as this from giving really more than they intended to give If they think it usurpation for the Bishops and the Presbyters who adhere to them to act in the name of the whole Presbyteries how much greater Vsurpation must it be for a smaller over-voted number of Presbyters to attempt the same without the Bishop Certainly his presence though only as a first Presbyter must add great Authority to the legitimating their Assemblies as that must also do to the validity of their actings in them § XIX NAY on the contrary as they cannot either by any precedent or any reason defend the validity of such acts of a smaller part of the Presbyters without the Bishops so I do not understand how they can avoid the owning the validity even of the acts of a smaller number of Presbyters in conjunction with the Bishops if they will consider their own interest in them The Presbyters who assisted the Bishops in the solemnities of ordeining their first Predecessors were much the smaller part of the Presbyteries As for the rest their consent was not so much as required neither by any express act of their own nor by any delegation of their power to those who were present nor presumed from their absence after a Canonical summons And yet if these acts were not valid our Brethren cannot possibly defend the validity of their own Ordinations But if they be I might then shew how impossible it is that the validity of such acts can be derived from the power of the Presbytery and how necessary it is that they be resolved into an absolute power of the Bishop and therefore how much they will be obliged to own the power of the Bishops that they may defend the validity of their own Orders And considering that the Bishops and Presbyters make up one Government it is impossible if he be absolute that they can be so too And therefore if he can validly dispose of the common right without their consent they cannot possibly dispose of it without his which will again invalidate the acts of those Presbyteries for which our Brethren are concerned And if this power of ordeining others was never given to our Brethren de facto and if withal the validity of the conveyance fail by which they may pretend to it de jure beside the intention of their Ordeiners I do not understand what more can be requisite for overthrowing the validity of their Ordinations § XX THAT which they are apt to object after all is that they are made Presbyters and were designed to be made so and to be made so in the Scripture Notion of that word and that Ordination is a right belonging to a Scripture Presbyter But why should they presume that their design was to make Presbyters in
§ I Separation of Churches FROM EPISCOPAL GOVERNMENT As practised by the present Non-Conformists PROVED SCHISMATICAL From such Principles as are least controverted and do withal most popularly explain The Sinfulness and Mischief OF SCHISM In this Treatise The Sin against the Holy Ghost the Sin unto Death and other difficult Scriptures are occasionally discoursed of and some useful Rules are given for EXPLICATION of SCRIPTVRE By HENRY DODWELL M.A. and sometimes Fellow of Trinity-College near Dublin in Ireland 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ign. Ep. ad Ephes. p. 20. Edit Voss. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Ep. ad Corinth §. 30. LONDON Printed for Benjamin Tooke at the Ship in S. Paul's Church-Yard MDCLXXIX THE PREFACE THE interests of those many parties which at present keep up the Divisions of Christendom are so highly concerned in the consequences of my present undertaking And the generality of men are so visibly partial in disputes wherein interest is concerned so much more inclinable to resent the severity of a conclusion that charges them with dangerous mistakes than to think how much indeed it is their interest rather to beware of errors that may prove dangerous than to stand out in the defence of what they have once undertaken to defend and how much it is therefore their interest to examine the premises with all possible accurateness and candor from whence such conclusions are deduced as that I cannot but expect some indications of the resentment of concerned Persons though I have endeavoured that the way of management might be as unoffensive as was possible Though my design be Peace yet that it self is enough to alarm the Spirits of many in the contentious Age we live in who when they are spoken to of peace will make them ready to battle And therefore I cannot but think my self concerned to foresee and prevent such prejudices as may hinder such who most need the informations given in the present Work either from reading them or from benefiting by them § II I MUST therefore warn my Reader in the first place that when he finds the Title promise him a Discourse concerning SCHISM he do not understand it in the same sense as it has been considered in so many modern discourses upon that Subject between us and the Romanists SCHISM not here considered as between Churches but as between particular Members and their own Churches I do not here consider the question of Schism between Churches but between Subjects separating from particular Churches and the Churches from which they separate This is all for which my present design does concern me and if my reasons prove that Subjects separating from their own particular Churches for unsinful Impositions are Schismaticks I shall perform what I intended But the same reasons will not prove a Church Schismatical for refusing impositions though unsinful from another Church For I suppose all Churches originally equal and that they have since submitted to prudential compacts which though they may oblige them as long as the reason of those compacts last and as far as the equity of those compacts may hold as to the true design of those that made them and as far as those compacts have meddled only with the alienable rights of particular Churches yet where any of these conditions fail there the particular Churches are at liberty to resume their antient rights And I suppose the power of judging when these condititions fail to be an unalienable right of particular Churches and not only to judg with the judgment of private discretion but such a judgment as may be an authentick measure of her own practice § III I DO not undertake to prove that these things are so in this discourse I only mention them that the Reader may understand on how different Principles these two questions are to be stated The Romanists can make no advantage of the Principles of this discourse to charge our Church with SCHISM and therefore how far it is from following that if the Non-Conformists be Schismaticks for separating from the Church of England therefore the Church of England must be Schismatical for refusing Communion with the Church of Rome and how far the reasons which I have here used for proving the Non-Conformists Schismatical are from being applicable to such a case of the Church of England I do not now insist upon those reasons which might have been produced to prove that the impositions of the Church of Rome are not unsinful no nor innocent of so high a degree of sin as might be greater than that of a particular Church's refusing correspondence with another The things which I have suggested plainly shew that the case will prove extremely different though we consider them barely as impositions not as sinful impositions And to let our Romish Adversaries know that I have already foreseen the use they would be likely to make of a discourse of this nature and how wary I have therefore been of using any reasons that might prove more than I intended or might hinder us from Principles sufficient for our own defence against them I shall desire them to consult my two short Discourses published with a design to prepare the way for this Work There they will find such principles of defence of our Church against them which will not clash with any thing said here which I verily believe true and which being supposed true I also conceive very sufficient to vindicate our Church from their imputation of SCHISM for our not communicating with them And I know not what they can desire more who will desire no more than what is equal § IV BUT as to the main mischief of SCHISM insisted on in this discourse the Nullity of Orders and Sacraments in the Persons guilty of separation and the consequent Sacriledg of those who shall presume in such a case to administer the Sacraments without sufficient Authority That they cannot charge us with even by their own Principles purely on the account of the separation They cannot deny but that Bishops even according to the design and practice of their own Church when we began our Reformation had all that power given them by them who made them Bishops which was requisite not only for mainteining a Church at present but also for mainteining a Succession in it through all succeeding generations They had the power not only of making other Priests who might administer the Sacraments during their own lives but also of making other Bishops who might convey this power to others Whoever they were that nominated the Persons whether the People or the Clergy or the Prince or the Pope yet still they were the Bishops who performed the office of Consecration which was that which was then thought immediately to confer the power It was then also believed that the Orders given and the Sacraments administred out of the Church by Persons duly Authorized by such as had power to authorize them were valid as to the substance of the things though
uncanonical as to the Persons who performed them This plainly appeared in their dealings with the Greeks and with all such established Churches They did not think it necessary to reordein their Clergy when they came over to them They cannot therefore for the same reason deny but that our first Bishops who were consecrated in their own Church had all that power given them at their Consecration which was requisite for the Succession since continued from them As for the pretended uncanonicalness of what they have done for mainteining this Succession besides what might have been said to shew the unobligingness of Canons in their case besides what might have been said to shew that they were performed canonically even by the then established Canons of their own Church besides that that is a pretence wherein they are too much parties to be our competent Judges However if all they said to this purpose were as true as they pretend it to be yet they can shew no such Canonical defect as themselves can by their own Principles judg sufficient to invalidate the whole performance § XIII AND for my part I cannot but look upon it as an Argument that God never intended to oblige particular Churches to as great a dependence on other Churches as that is wherein he has obliged Subjects to depend on their own Churches because by his contrivance of things it does not follow that separating Churches must be left as destitute of the ordinary means of salvation upon their separation from other Churches as it has appeared from our Principles that particular Subjects are upon their separation from their own Churches It rather appears that abating what obligations they have brought upon themselves by their own compacts God has made them equal when he has contrived no obligation in interest to make one yield rather than the other There is no way of judging who is in the right but by the intrinsick merit of the cause nor is there any presumption in favour of a particular Church to presume the cause right because it is hers So that there remains no way of deciding such differences but that which is necessary and very proper for those who are exactly equal And for my part I do really believe that the true original design of those compacts whereby particular Churches have voluntarily submitted to restrictions of their original power was only that every particular Church might have her censures confirmed in all other Churches in reference to those who were originally her own Subjects not to gain a power over any other Subjects but her own nor to submit to any other power any farther than was requisite to oblige her to observe the same equity to them which whatever it may do in that Community of Churches which may be enabled by such compacts to maintein a mutual correspondence yet cannot in any equity be so expounded as to make her absolutely subject to any particular Church of that Community § VI IN managing therefore this charge of SCHISM in the sense now explained I have indeed insisted on such Principles which may seem something strange and surprising to the Age we live in but certainly much more likely to give light to the Subject than any I know of promoted by any other The advantages of the particular way of management of this discourse and withal much more consonant to the sentiments of Catholick Antiquity To shew that they are more agreeable to the sense of Catholick Antiquity is to be the Subject of my Second Historical Part. That they are peculiarly fitted to give light to this Subject above any other Hypothesis hitherto promoted I have shewn in the last Chapter of this whither the Reader may have recourse who desires before his reading of the whole to have a short account of the peculiar advantages of these Principles Besides to facilitate his understanding of what is there said and withal to let him understand in short a Summary of the whole design and the accurateness of the way by which I have endeavoured to manage it I have prefixed a short account of it digested into the several Propositions whereof it consists and ranked in the natural order wherein they follow each other with references also to the Chapters where they are particularly proved And if any desire to know in short what Topicks are insisted on for their proofs those he may also find in the Contents of those Chapters immediately subjoined This way of ordering them will be of great use both for him who has not yet read the whole Discourse to know what he is to expect in it and for him who has to recollect what influence every particular discourse has upon the whole design Besides it will be a great ease to the Readers of different Principles Each of them does grant things which others deny But by these references every one may know where to find that particular Proposition discoursed which he particularly doubts of This may serve for those who are by all means willing to shorten their pains Otherwise I should rather intreat him who would be willing to bestow pains on a Subject of so great importance to him and so worthy of his pains rather to read the whole which will best qualifie him to judg of the particulars by reason of their connexion The reason will appear more solid and convincing when it is found to hold good in all the train of consequences than when it is applied only to one particular § VII AND the least that I hope the Reader will find from a candid perusal of what is here said is that the question is of much greater importance than it is commonly conceived to be The great Consequence of the present controversie And this is but very necessary for that multitude of well-meaning Persons among us who go indifferently to the Church or Conventicle according as they are affected to the Minister that officiates in either place I will not undertake to judg how far their good meaning may go to excuse them before God whilest they are inquisitive and desirous of conviction and cannot find it but it is certain it cannot alter the nature of the thing If the thing they do be a great sin it is never the less so because it is done with a good meaning though it may indeed be less imputed whilest they sincerely seek for information The Crucifixion of our Saviour was a great sin to the Jews though they did it ignorantly and St. Paul calls himself the chief of sinners for having persecuted the Church though he was conscious of having done it out of a Principle of zeal Now if there be such a sin as SCHISM possible to be committed I do not see how the breach on both sides can be excused from it Either we must be guilty of it for exercising our Authority over them if we have no just title to such Authority or they must be guilty of it for refusing their obedience if we have
God and the present sense of their Occidental Church the standard of Tradition without recourse to the monuments of the Primitive times and admitted withal so many incompetent ways of bringing in new opinions as new pretended revelations attested by justly-suspicious miracles not to mention the Authority of the Pope whereby it came to be in the power of a few to impose upon the whole it could not be admired that the further they pursued the consequences of these Principles the more they should prove mistaken and that meaner Persons who had the happiness to examine things by more certain Principles should discover many things which they had overseen And as to the means of information that those Ages of Popery wherein their errors were introduced wanted many such means with which God had blessed the World at the beginning of the Reformation Such were the edition of many of the unquestionable Records of the Primitive times the study of the tongues wherein the Scriptures and those Primitive Monuments were written the exacter skill in Ecclesiastical Antiquity by which they were better enabled to distinguish counterfeit from genuine Writers With these assistances it could not be admired if meaner Persons made greater discoveries than great multitudes of others who were otherwise more sagacious if they wanted them § XIV THE same plea I have to make against our present Adversaries both as to Principles and as to the means of information As to Principles that one great Principle by them opposed to the other extreme of the Romanists That the Scripture alone is the adaequate Digest of all Ecclesiastical Practices as well as of matters of belief was by rational consequence like to lead them into multitudes of errors into a contempt of Authority into a rejection of Ecclesiastical Constitutions prudently fitted to circumstances of present practice into an impossibility of Ecclesiastical Peace till all sorts of Persons Laicks as well as Clergymen may be agreed on which side the Scripture is clear in many things whereof if this Principle should prove false no account at all is to be expected in the Scripture Now the mistake of these men is not in any thing that concerns their abilities but meerly in their infelicity in lighting on such a very fallacious principle They judg of the consequences and judg rightly and I am so far of their mind that these and the like things are indeed just consequences from that Principle But the Principle it self they take up as a Principle that is precariously either without any reason at all or upon such reasons as could signifie nothing with any but such as are already possessed with a great favour to it They do not ordinarily dispute it without some indignation at the supposed impiety of him who questions it and by their whole behaviour clearly shew that it is rather their affection and the insensible prejudices of education that has engaged them in defence of it than any shew of reason either that it is true or that it is impious to question it And can we think it any reflection on the abilities of such to be insensibly carried away into a belief of such Principles when they make so little use of their abilities in judging concerning them § XV THE like may be also said concerning our means of information that our Adversaries generally use such means of understanding the Scripture as must necessarily leave them ignorant of many things which yet might certainly have been designed by the sacred Writers and by the Holy Ghost who inspired them Which is one general way of their making disputes endless by requiring a resolution in such cases wherein their own unwary stating of things have made them uncapable of a resolution They are for expounding the Scriptures only by themselves especially in matters doctrinal without allusion to the sense of those times in terms of Art which were plainly suited to the capacities of them who used those terms without allusion to the Notions and Doctrines of those times which were either confirmed or confuted by the sacred Writers without allusion to the whole Systemes of Principles then mainteined though they are very forward to expound difficult obscure passages by their modern Systemes without so much as offering to shew that any then mainteined them which yet they call expounding it by the Analogy of Faith without allusion to the Systemes of the immediately succeeding Ages of the Church who certainly took up their Systeme from what they understood of the Apostles minds from their Writings and Preachings and Conversations to whose capacities the Sacred Writings themselves were more immediately accommodated than they were to ours Upon these and the like Principles most of those things are grounded which may look like Paradoxes in my Expositions of the Scripture And I shall say no more at present in defence of them because something has been suggested to that purpose in several parts of this discourse but principally and professedly in my Prolegomena to my Tutors Book de Obstinatione whither I must again by all means refer my Reader who shall be curious to know what I have to say in favour of these seeming Novelties All that I shall at present remark to my present purpose is that by either not thinking on these things or by utterly neglecting them if they did think of them they must have deprived themselves of all possibility of understanding those Scriptures which were not intelligible without them And then what wonder is it that many things may be cleared by these assistances which they had never thought on nay that they should be cleared by one who had been incomparably less able to clear them if he as well as they had wanted these assistances § XVI BUT to give them all they can with any shew of reason desire Suppose I were as much mistaken as it the interest of their cause to wish I should be suppose their condition were not indeed so dangerous as I conceive it to be Yet why should they take it ill to be warned of a danger which I thought to be a danger though I were mistaken in thinking so Can I do otherwise if I would let them see my hearty well-wishes for their welfare Can I do it more fairly or with less suspicion of imposing on them than by tendring my reasons why I think their condition dangerous to their impartial consideration And what hurt is done them if my reasons should prove less convincing Must it not be a great satisfaction to themselves to be assured that those reasons are not convincing which make others think their condition dangerous Must it not be much more satisfactory even to themselves to know the uttermost of those reasons than only to be left to indefinite suspicions which usually in matters wherein mens fears are concerned make men apt to think they may be more solid than they appear to be upon enquiry No doubt they would think so who were as serious and sincere for their spiritual
demeanor which may sweeten the temper of the Erroneous Person and dispose him to receive Conviction which are absolutely necessary to recommend his Endeavours for the direction of the Judicious or the Authoritative Guidance of the Multitude are not only very reconcilable with but very naturally consequent to the temper of a Pious and Peaceable Person § IV BUT this way of managing Controversies with a design of Peace is not only fitted to the Qualifications of an useful Controvertist but the most Prudent Rules of managing that Employment For the true design of an useful Controvertist being the discovery of such Truths wherein Mankind is concerned for their Practice those means must be most Prudent for this purpose which may either secure us of finding the Truth it self where it is capable of being found or make the Ignorance excusable and the Practice secure where it cannot And for both these purposes this design of Peace in our Religious Disputes does best fit us especially in such as these concerning Government for which we are at present concerned § V OVR Enquiring with a design of Peace does best fit us for the discovery of Truth it self I do not now mean only as it provokes our Industry in our search and makes us Candid both in judging and in acknowledging the success of our own Convictions but also as the Peaceableness of a Proposition of this nature may be made an Argument of its Truth it self For considering that the Catholick Peace of the Christian Churches within themselves and with each other is an End not only worthy of the Divine Providence but actually designed by him and considering that it is not agreeable to the Divine Prudence that he should have designed an End without Means or with Means repugnant to it and particularly in our Case that he should design an End to be procured by the Church as certainly in all Bodies Politick whatsoever is necessary for the preservation of its publick Peace is inseparably and peculiarly the Province of its Governours without Means in the power of the Church for procuring it or with Institutions directly contrary and considering withal that God in dealing with the Church has not considered her Abstractly but as she is at present in this Life under all her frailties and disadvantageous Circumstances We may therefore argue both Positively that whatever is necessary for preserving this Peace of the Church in this Life as consisting of Persons though well-meaning yet generally frail and obnoxious both to mistakes and Prejudices that has certainly been provided for by God and Negatively that what is necessarily destructive of that Peace I mean with a Moral Necessity considering the frailties of the generality even of well-meaning Persons that is certainly contrary to the true design of God So that though we had no other Argument against our Adversaries Principles and Practices but this that Catholick Peace is by them rendred unpracticable and Morally impossible at least in this Life and that by ours alone it is capable of being maintained this alone were sufficient to prove as well their Falshood as their Inexpediency and mischievousness and as well to prove the Truth of our own Principles and Practices as the convenience of them on Politick Considerations I am aware what ill Arguments some Men have deduced from this Topick whilst they argue what God must have done or not have done independently on Revelation But then I consider also that their mistakes are not deduced from this Proposition in the general and indefinite way wherein I have expressed it but from their particular Applications whilst they gratuitously presume either that an End was intended by God which was not or that some Means was conducive or necessary for it which has proved otherwise on a particular Examination And I confess that before this can be applyed to our Dissenting Brethrens Case it will need several other more particular improvements But though this Principle or its Application were indeed as fallible as they are concerned to believe it to be yet I add farther § VI THAT it will at least even in that Case secure the Practice Innocent and render the Error Excusable In Reason and Conscience as well as in Policy we are obliged to be more wary where our mistakes are like to prove of dangerous Consequence and where the mischief will be very great there the necessity of the thing and our Conviction of it must be proportionable that may secure our Practice For besides that no Error of our Judgment is ever likely to be imputed to us to our Prejudice but that which is joyned with some ill disposition of our Will and that it is certainly no such ill disposition of our Will to prefer a Duty of greater before another of lesser consequence and to prejudg in favour of it where there does not appear such evident conviction to the contray as may make amends for the danger of venturing on it for in matters of Practice the dangerousnes as well as the Falshood of an Assertion is very Justly and Conscientiously considerable especially when the danger is of offending God and ruining our own Souls and besides that no Prudent and Good Legislators could think it convenient for the Publick that their greatest and most important commands should be neglected as often as there might appear some little probable Evidence for some lesser Duty that were inconsistent with them and that they must therefore be better pleased with him who in such a Case should stick to the greater Duty and neglect the less than with him who should extremely prejudice the Publick by a too scrupulous adherence to his own Convictions and must judg it reasonable to be better pleased with him though in the Event he should prove mistaken not only in regard of his good meaning and the pitiableness of his condition but also in regard of the real usefulness of such a Presumption for the Publick in such a Case wherein it were managed with Sincerity and Candor and it can certainly be no dishonour to Presume him pleased with that which we have reason to believe would please a Good and Just humane Legislator in regard of its reasonableness and good influence on the Publick for which he were concerned and besides that this is a certain Rule in all Positive Commands where the omission is not intrinsecally evil that all such things cease to be so much as Duties when they prove inconsistent with others of greater consequence to the Publick nay and that this is a Rule approved by God himself in the practice of his own Commands as is professedly proved by our Saviour himself Mat. XII 7 in that of the Sabbath which is an Observation which I believe might prove very useful to facilitate our Dissenting Brethrens complyance if they would be pleased to consider it I say besides all these Considerations the very want of such an Evidence for smaller Duties as may make amends for their consequential Prejudice to
better Information of their present Consciences and I am confident our Brethren themselves are more Ingenuous than to assert the former only for avoiding the latter But besides this agreeableness to the Office of a Peace-maker to engage in Controversies necessary to be abetted for the interest of Peace I might have added farther that it is very suitable to the Office of a Lover of Peace to be favourable to such endeavours which how near it will concern our dissenting Brethren as they would approve themselves Lovers of it themselves will easily understand without any application of mine And how far even a favour to Peace might proceed towards an actual reconciliation notwithstanding Mens other differences in Opinion I have already intimated §. 8 9. § XXXIII AND certainly if the Peace of the Church be concerned in any Controversies it cannot be denyed to be most considerably so concerned in these of Schism Which the rather deserve an exact discussion because as Schism is the great Ecclesiastical Crime of our Age and Countries so the Persons guilty of it have rendred the very Notion of it intricate that they might clear their own Practices from such an Aspersion Nor indeed have these false Notions only found acceptance among such as are at present concerned to clear themselves from its Guilt but have been taken up from several disorderly Practices of some of the first Reformers who were not obliged to Enquire into it by the opposition of their Romish Adversaries who generally in the last Age did not insist on the charge of Schism but Heresie against them Nay have been too much countenanced by several less wary Sons of our own Church who partly being themselves ill Principled in the Right of Church-Authority which they made very deeply if not wholly dependent on the power of the Secular Magistrate and such a Party there has been among us from the beginning of the Reformation to this very day occasioned by the first Disputes concerning the Supremacy in these Kingdomes as it is not ordinary for the generality in such Disputes of Interest and especially where there were so great and intollerable Encroachments on the Secular Power challenged by their Competitors to avoid Extreams on which Principles it was easier to charge Dissenters with Sedition in the State than Schism in the Church And partly being favourable to some Forreigners who were hardly if at all excusable from that Notion of Schism with which our own Non-Conformists have been chargeable And partly finding so much advantage in the Particulars Disputed of to convince Dissenters of the Unreasonableness and Injustice of their Separation on such Pretences without engaging themselves in those less grateful Controversies wherein they were likely to expose themselves to the Odium of the Populacy and Civil Magistracy And partly being unreasonably fearful to give their Romish Adversaries any advantage either against themselves if they defended themselves by such Principles as might reach all the Cases of the several Reformers or against their Friends in the main Cause if they had thus a vowedly disowned their proceedings in the manner of its management These I say seem to have been the real Motives which in all likelyhood prevailed with the more Prudent and Intelligent Controvertists to divert them to another way of managing those Disputes and the Authority of these may have been conceived sufficient for influencing others § XXXIV IT is therefore easie to foresee the Odium to which an Enquiry of this Nature must be obnoxious and the great advantage our Adversaries have of us in the Sentiments of the vulgar Yet the establishing the true Notion of Schism is so extreamly necessary for fixing any solid grounds of Catholick Peace as that I hope our Judicious and Candid Brethren will not only excuse us but conceive themselves obliged in Equity and Conscience to hearken patiently and to Judg favourably especially when they shall find in our way of management nothing offensive to such as are not ready to be offended with Truth itself when it shall declare it self their Adversary For though it cannot be thought incredible here what we Experience so usual in other Instances wherein particular Interests are concerned that Men in reducing their general Notions to Practice are many times swayed and many times misguided into Extravagances unjustifiable by their general Principles and that well-meaning Persons as well as others are obnoxious to the same frailties yet many of our Non-Conforming Brethrens Errors in Practice are so naturally consequent from their Principles as that indeed they cannot be sufficiently prevented without discovering the Errors of the Principles themselves § XXXV THUS as their Doctrine in this Question perfectly overthrows all exercise of Ecclesiastical Government nay plainly supposes that either there is no such thing or that it is perfectly Democratical if indeed that may be called properly so much as Democratical Government it self where there is no obligation to submit acknowledged even in the smaller part when Government is exercised upon them but what arises from their disability to resist so I confess their Notion of Schism and the Duty of a Peace-maker as described by them are exactly fitted to this Hypothesis For supposing the Church as established by Christ not to have been confederated as all Commonwealths are by a Political Subordination of Governours and Governed but only to have been a Multitude of Men no otherwise united among themselves than by the Vnanimity of each particular or at the uttermost only as the Schools of the Philosophers were by a reverential respect and gratitude of Disciples to their Teachers no Man can here be supposed to have any reason to impose his own Judgment on another or if he does he cannot in reason expect that the Person so imposed on should conceive himself obliged to yield to the Imposition or think the others proceedings Just if he should endeavour to force him to it any further than he is satisfied that the other has reason to justifie his proceedings § XXXVI FOR this Vnity being as I said founded on the Vnanimity of the particulars they cannot be obliged further to maintain this Vnity of Amicable Correspondence than as they are on all sides convinced concerning the reasonableness of the Particulars exacted as Conditions of that Correspondence or if any yielding may be thought reasonable in such a State even in particulars which are thought unreasonable yet it can only then be thought obliging when the Particulars are of absolute Necessity for maintaining such an Amicable Correspondence Otherwise where the things themselves are not thought true or yielding them is not thought absolutely Necessary I do not say for humouring the Person but for maintaining an Amicable Correspondence with the whole Multitude though it may be Lawful nay sometimes Noble and Generous to bear even with the humours of particular weaker Persons and much more when they are Numerous yet there being no Jurisdiction on either side there can also be no obligation to yield And
therefore they who deny their Correspondence without submission to Terms unnecessary and humoursome cannot in any reason exact a complyance from Dissenters who believe their Terms to be of that nature and such Dissenters refusing such Terms and consequently such Correspondence which cannot be had without them do no more than what they can justifie which in this Case cannot be pretended concerning the Imposers who are supposed to arrogate a Power not belonging to them without any pretence either of Authority or even of Necessity for maintaining a confident Correspondence and consequently the blame of such a breach cannot be charged on such Dissenters but such Imposers § XXXVII AND as upon this Hypothesis that the Church is only such a Multitude united on no other Terms than the necessity of an Amicable Correspondence betwixt the particulars this must indeed be the true Notion of a Formal and Culpable Schism so it would be very congruous to the Office of a Peace-maker not to perswade the Dissenters to yield but the Imposers to forbear Imposing For seeing in such a Case there can be no other Necessity pretended for submitting to such Impositions in order to the signifying their own desires of maintaining an Amicable Correspondence with their Brethren but either their willingness to be convinced of the Reasonableness of the things exacted from them or their willingness to yield in things necessary for a Correspondence that is which the Exacters think themselves obliged to exact and which they from whom they are Exacted do not Judg more intollerable than the loss of their Correspondence which must not be hoped for but on such Concessions They must as well be guilty of the interruption of this Correspondence who confine it to Conditions which even themselves confess unnecessary to be imposed as they who so undervalue it as to refuse to purchase it by some inconsiderable Submissions even to humoursome Conditions § XXXVIII AND as little as our Brethren are aware that their Discourses of this kind are founded on this Hypothesis of the Churches being no Body Politick especially when themselves are obliged in Interest to urge Authority for the restraint of their own refractory Subjects yet if any do yet doubt of it I shall without Digression only desire them to consider the natural and obvious tendency of those Principles so eagerly maintained among them concerning the Power of the Church's being not a Power of Coercion but only of Perswasion which coordinate private Persons may as well challenge as Governours and concerning the Justice of their defending their Christian Liberty as they call it even in things Indifferent and in opposition to Ecclesiastical Governours which plainly overthrows the Duty of Submission in Subjects which necessarily answers Authority in Governours and the great Disparities which they always pretend when they are urged with any Parallel Instances wherein themselves acknowledg any Coercive Authority betwixt such an Authority and that which they will acknowledg in the Church that I may not now charge them with such Extravagancies of particular Persons as are neither generally owned nor are Fundamental to their Non-Conformity § XXXIX AND from this Irreconcilableness of their Practices in urging the same Authority to their own Subjects which they have denyed to their Governours it comes to pass that they are unable to give any Positive consistent Hypothesis agreeable with it self and exclusive of the pretences of Seditious Persons Though I must withal confess that of all the Non-Conformists the Independents as in other Cases so here seem to me to speak most Consequently to the Principles granted them by the Presbyterians who shewed them the first Precedent of Division in placing the first Seat of Government in the Common People For this gives the most consistent account of the Calling Succession of their Ministers notwithstanding their not being empowered by such Officers as according to the Government established from which they separated were only possessed of the power of Calling in an Ordinary way and will afford the best Apology for their resisting the first Church-Officers whilst they were countenanced by the Communalty to whom they conceive the Officers themselves accountable § XL BUT besides that this Hypothesis is very Precarious and because that though the Communalty had been Originally invested with this power yet the Peaceable Prescription of so many Centuries against them wherein this Power has been exercised by and acknowledged as the Right only of Church-Officers and unanimously submitted to as such by the concerned Communalties themselves which is certainly sufficient to alienate even a Just Title that is by any Humane Means alienable and by the Principles of Government must make it as Schismatical for them forcibly to retrive it without the consent of those whom they found actually possessed of it as it would be Seditious now for any to attempt to restore the old British or Roman Title to England because they were once good and Legal I say besides these Presumptions which lie against this power of the People for legitimating their Vsurpations yet if this were granted to be the Peoples Right there are further very Just Exceptions against their Dissenting Brethrens Proceedings which may make it questionable whether what has been done in favour of them be fit to be reputed as a valid Act of the People themselves For either they must establish some Ordinary Rules of Assembling and Acting by which it may be known what is really transacted by the Communalty and what is only pretended to be so by a few Seditious Dissenters without which no Notion of Government not so much as Democratical is intelligible and upon these Principles either they will I doubt find it more difficult than they seem to be aware of to Justify their first Separation from any Regular Proceedings of the Communalties themselves neither their Assemblies being Legally indicted nor their Suffrages being Legally managed according to the necessary Laws of Democratical Government Or they must allow a liberty of Separation to every one who can perswade so many of the Communalty to joyn with him as may make a distinct Church that is according to them Seaven Persons That is two Parties two Witnesses two Judges and an odd Person that the Suffrages of the Judges may not be even And thus they plainly overthrow all Government so much as Democratical unless over such small Numbers as Seaven and allow every Seditious Person who can Proselite them a Liberty of Subdividing from and in opposition to themselves by the same Precedent as they have done from others § XLI BUT if on the other side the Vnity of the Church be supposed to be that of a Body Politick the true Notion of SCHISM must be this that it dissolves the Church's Vnity in such a sense as this And because this Vnity consists in a due Subordination of Governors and Governed therefore the Notion of Schism consequent hereunto must be this that it is an Interruption of this Subordination And therefore 1.
such a Separation as denies not only Actual Obedience but the Lawful Jurisdiction of Superiors and withdrawes Subjects from the proper Legal Coercions of such a Society especially if continued in the same Districts where Separation from Government is not intelligible without opposition to it must needs be Schismatical For where there are two Governments not Subordinate there must needs be two Bodies Politick and therefore that Separation which interrupts this Subordination and erects an Independent Government must consequently dissolve this Political Vnity and be Schismatical This therefore being the true ground of this Notion of Schism must be the principal thing requisite to be proved against our Adversaries And whether it be proved directly that the Church is such a Body Politick and it be thence inferred that such a Separation as that I have been speaking of is properly Schismatical or whether the Separation be first proved Schismatical and this Political Vnity of the Church be thence deduced both ways of proceeding will come to the same event § XLII ESPECIALLY considering 2. that though indeed we can by Reason prove it very convinient and avaylable for the Salvation of particular Persons that they be thus confederated into Political Societies yet we cannot prove it so necessary as that Antecedently to all Positive Revelation we might have been able to conclude that God must have thus confederated them For besides the great Presumption and Vncertainty of this way of Arguing what God must have done from what we esteem fit and convenient acknowledged by all Equal Persons in Instances whereof they may be presumed Equal Judges that is when this Argument is produced in favour of Adversaries the Argument is then more especially Weak and Imprudent when the conveniences are no greater than still to leave many things to the determination of Humane Prudence and such they are here and when we can have securer ways of Arguing as none will doubt but that it is much more secure to Enquire what God has actually done from actual Revelation than from our own fallible Conjectures what was fit to have been done by him especially in things so Indifferent and Arbitrary as these are concerning which I am at present discoursing If therefore it may appear that God has actually made the Church a Body Politick it will follow that resistance to Ecclesiastical Governors must be actually comdemned by God as Shismatical and on the contrary if it appear that God has actually condemned Resistance to Ecclesiastical Officers as Schismatical it will also follow that he has made the Church a Body Politick there being no other difference betwixt these two ways of Arguing but that one of them is a priori the other a posteriori but in both of them the Connexion is equally certain from its own rational Evidence § XLIII 3. THEREFORE As this actual Constitution of the Church is most proper to be proved from Scripture so the most satisfactory way of proving it thence will be not only to prove thence the Duty of Obedience to be required from Subjects to their Ecclesiastical Superiors but also to discover from thence the mischief likely to befall Subjects upon their Disobedience For 1. it is in vain to constitute a Government or a Body Politick properly so called without a Coercive Power over its particular refractory Members And therefore if in the Constitution of the Church as established in the Scriptures there appeared nothing Coercive over its particular Members to force them to the performance of their Duty under pain of a greater Prejudice to be incurred by them in case of refusal than that of barely acting irrationally and indecorously this very Omission would make it suspicious that the Duty exacted from them were no more than that Reverential respect which we commonly conceive due to Persons of excellent accomplishments or from whom we have received particular Obligations though they have no Right of Jurisdiction over us but not that Obedience which is properly due to Governours of Societies by virtue of their Offices without any regard to their Personal accomplishments and our Obligations to them So that this real Prejudice which is likely to be incurred by the Subject in Case of Disobedience is very necessary to be discovered from the nature of the Constitution of the Church as it is expressed in the Scripture even in order to the clearing the Nature of the Duty and the extent of the obligation of this Authority § XLIV AND 2. the Church being on this Supposal an External Body Politick its Coercive Power must also be External And therefore though the validity of her Censures be derived from Gods seconding them that is from his remitting or binding in Heaven what she remits or binds on Earth yet this power will indeed be very little Coercive if Gods confirmation be thought easily separable from the Churches Act. For seeing that a Society of this nature cannot imply any External Coercion of the External Act all the Coercion she can pretend to can be no other than a Deprivation of those Priviledges which are enjoyed and may be pretended to by virtue of her visible Membership and an exposing the Person so deprived to all the Calamities consequent to such a Deprivation But if the Confirmation of these censures by God be wholly resolved into the merit of the Cause for which they were inflicted they can never be feared nor consequently prove Coercive to their Subjects who are not convinced of the merit of the Cause it self Which in the event will make them never properly Coercive at all especially in regard of a Government which is acknowledged Fallible as the Church is generally by Protestants For it is to be presumed that all who stand out so obstinately against the Churches Authority as to provoke her Censures either are not or pretend not to be satisfied with the Justice of her Decrees and therefore if their own Judgments may be taken as all the Coerciveness of such Censures as these are which are not Externally Coercive must be derived from the Judgments of the Persons lying under them concerning their validity there can be no hopes of reclaiming them by Censures who are not already such as may be presumed satisfied concerning the Justice of the Cause for which they were inflicted and yet such alone are the proper Objects of Coercive Power § XLV BESIDES those Censures which are supposed only Declarative not Operative are not properly the Acts of Authorized but Skillful Persons for it is Skill not Authority that is a Prudent Presumption that any thing is such as it is Declared and therefore the Opinions of Learned Doctors though but private Persons would in this way of Proceeding be much more formidable than the Peremptory Sentences of Ecclesiastical Governours as they are considered only under that Relation I cannot see how this can be denied by those who conceive the Declaration to be purely-Speculative and to be of no further force for obliging particular Persons than as upon
particular examination of its Grounds it may appear to be well grounded But if the Declaration be conceived to be Authentical as it is performed by such Persons the meaning of that must be that it must be generally presumed valid so that the cases may be but rare wherein the Person obnoxious to it may presume his own cause so good as to venture to stand out in opposition to it And to that purpose it will be requisite that the Sentences be presumed valid before God even in cases wherein Governours may themselves be mistaken in the Causes of their Infliction as I see no reason why they may not where the mistake is at the uttermost no more than an Imprudence not a Sin either to Governours or Governed for in such a case though the Omission it self be not Sinful as considered Precisâ—ly yet it may as Obstinacy against lawful Governours and Disobedience and violation of Peace which will oblige us to condescend in Instances howere Imprudent if not Sinful may make it so or that the Instances wherein they may prove Invalid before God be either so rare or so difficult to be known more securely by a Mans private Judgment than by the publick as that it can very rarely be Judged Safe or Prudent for a Man to rely on his own private Judgment concerning them in opposition to the Publick § XLVI ESPECIALLY considering 3. that this Church Government is by all acknowledged Fallible in matters of that nature for which we are concerned in our present Controversy The very Romanists themselves confess their Ordinary Ecclesiastical Governors at least Fallible in matters of Fact and in Rules of Prudence and our dissenting Brethren themselves do not charge our Impositions with Heresy or Immorality But if the Censures of a Fallible Church cannot be presumed valid in any Instances wherein we cannot be assured that she is not actually mistaken and the nature of the thing is such as does not afford certain Arguments on either side but generally contrary probabilities on both such a Government must generally prove Vseless and Vnpracticable and therefore unlikely to have been settled by God § XLVII AND then 4. the very design of the Constitution of this Body Politick being Spiritual the Rewards and Punishments must be so too And therefore that Subjects may be encouraged to Obedience and discouraged from Disobedience it will be requisite that they may as confidently presume that they shall receive such Spiritual Advantages by virtue of their admission into such a Society to which no private Dispositions whatsoever could so assuredly intitle them I do not say if they had proved negligent in their Addresses to be admitted into it but also if they had not submitted to all Impositions not Sinful in Order to their reception into it and have as Just and Probable Reasons for fearing Spiritual Inconveniences by their exclusion from it as Secular Subjects are assured of Secular Advantages or Disadvantages by their admission to or exclusion from Secular Societies § XLVIII AND 5. it is very agreeable to the same design that where exclusion does not as it did in the Apostles time expose the Person to external visible Corporal Inflictions as now generally it does not there it be at least understood to deprive the Person excluded of all the Priviledges he enjoyed by virtue of his being a Member of such a Society and so to expose him to those mischieves whatever they be that are necessarily consequent to such a deprivation § XLIX AND 6. it is also very consequent to the same purpose that the Priviledges of such a Society be understood to be all the Advantages designed by God in its Erection And therefore whatever good was designed to Mankind in the Gospel there is no reason to believe that he designed it for any particulars any farther than as they should approve themselves willing to submit to such Terms as he was pleased to prescribe them and it is not Credible that if he were pleased to erect a Body Politick he should be thought at the same time to allow such encouragements out of it and independent on it as that it should be left to the Liberty of particular Subjects either to enter themselves into it or not to enter themselves or to submit to its constitutions or to refuse submission § L AND 7. that these hopes and fears may prove in an external way Coercive it is very convenient that their application to particular Persons be transacted with particular external Solemnities For it is by this means that particular Persons may be justly terrified with the loss of the Spiritual Advantages when they are excluded from the external Solemnities of Application without which they are not Ordinarily to be expected And this is all which can be done by Governours to exclude particular Subjects from such Solemnities which can be of no efficacy for terrifying Conscientious Persons if the Advantages to be gained by them may also be easily expected without them And as all this is very naturally consequent to a design of Erecting the Church into a Body Politick and does effectually promote that design by letting Subjects understand their obligation to submit to all Impositions not Sinful under pain of losing all the Ordinary means of intitling themselves to the Priviledges of the Gospel so certainly it must give Men the most satisfactory account that God has actually intended such a design to let them understand that this is the very Method observed by God in the actual Constitution of the Church under the Gospel And indeed whoever denies any of them will make Government so unpracticable as that it would be improbable to have been designed by God § LI But for proving all this I cannot think it reasonable to confine my Discourse to express Scriptures both because as I have already observed we do not find the Scripture to enlarge professedly on Instances of this nature but rather Occasionally to intimate them as coincident with its principal design as presuming them already sufficiently Notorious from the Practices of the Church to the capacities of the meanest Idiotes then living And because it is not usual for the Scriptures even where they do indeed allude to notorious Practices to insist Critically on their true design and usefullness which were then also so very notorious from the manner of their Practice as that the weaker fort of Christians for whose use the Scripture was principally accommodated could not be presumed Ignorant of them as they were then concerned to know them And because it is not the Letter but the Sense of the Scripture for which I am at present principally concerned and it is in Prudence the most advisable means to expound the Sense of all Laws especially concerning Power by the actually avowed Practices of the Courts of their respective Jurisdictions And because the Practices of the Churches in those Primitive Ages especially those concerning the power of the several Orders of Governours undoubtedly established by the
lively representations and read better Books at home than they can expect to hear Sermons in the Church § IX ESPECIALLY in times of Persecution when it may be dangerous to themselves and give offence to the Secular powers what can oblige such Persons as these to meet in Assemblies when they may on these Principles expect as much Grace and as confidently in their Closet-Devotions as in Churches Is it that they may confess Christ before Men But what need is there of confessing him before them who acknowledg him already Or how can they be said to confess him before his Enemies by what is done in their private Assemblies and with all Arts of concealment Why should they not rather do it where their Adversaries may see and hear them Is it for their mutual Edification and encouragement to persevere But why might not this have been done as well by private conferences at their occasional meetings in their ordinary conversation as in solemn and numerous and therefore Suspicious Assemblies Why should it only be the employment of Ministers and ordained Persons more than others Nay indeed what will Orders signifie when upon these terms they who are able may not only serve their own Souls but supply the necessities of others without any Ordination and they who are not able are never likely to do it to any purpose though they be Ordained Is it that by Orders some may be engaged to the employment and being engaged obliged to continue in it for the securing the publick Service who might otherwise be unwilling to neglect their private affairs for it when they might be prejudiced by such attendance But what need would there be of this in times of Persecution when the Zeal of particular Persons may be supposed to be more than ordinarily inflamed and withal to be less than ordinarily diverted by the care of their Secular affairs What need even in times of Prosperity when either many might offer themselves out of Zeal for the Service of Souls or might be ambitious of the employment as more honourable and gainful than their own or might conveniently spare as many houres from their own Callings as professed Ministers when allowance is made for their private Studies Especially when they might by this Means grow Popular and either bring in some Addition of gain or at least save some expences they must have been otherwise charged with for the maintenance of others I am sure we have not in our late Experiences found these Cases unpracticable or unlikely And if as often as they happen every one that pleases or that can gain a Party to follow him may without scruple invade that sacred employment there would not be that necessity of insisting on Ordination as the constant ordinary way For even Ordination cannot compel Men to undertake it and they who were willing would on these Principles need no Ordination to qualifie them for it And if the Sacred Calling were little esteemed it would be as hard to get in that number which might be necessary for the Publick as to continue them but if it were valued and thought more desirable than Ordinary Callings it is hard to conceive but that as great numbers would freely offer themselves as are observed to crowd into those Ordinary Callings which are well reputed of so that Ordination would be rarely either necessary or useful Or is Ordination thought necessary for the exclusion of unfit ambitious Pretendâ—â—s But they who could not gain a Party would â—â—ed no exclusion and they who could could not on these terms â—e excluded how unworthy soever For indeed on these Principles all Government must be resolved into the pleasure of the promiscuous Multitude § X SEEING therefore that the signification of the external Symbols does as little answer their design as their nature and that there must be acknowledged in them a more plentiful conveyance of Grace than can proceed from their bare objective representation and the influence that may have upon us for raising Devotion in us it will plainly follow that Christ has been pleased actually to convey his Graces by the Sacramental Symbols as Ordinary Means of his own institution by which he has obliged himself to convey them and not only to raise them up by their Objective representation That he has therefore thought it convenient to convey his Graces themselves by these external Symbols even unto such as have already all the Moral Dispositions they are capable of having Antecedently to the reception of them and no more can rationally be expected from them And that he has consequently obliged even Persons so disposed to a participation of the Symbols as they are desirous to partake of the Graces conveyed by them And that he has not only done this in particular Cases but to the generality of Mankind that shall ever receive his Doctrine And not left it to their Prudence but imposed it with an eternal and immutable obligation These must certainly be great Arguments that he thought it necessary for the generality of Mankind and consequently for the ends of Government And it is by this general advantage for the generality of Mankind that the Ordinary Means are to be estimated seeing it is thought fit in all humane Prudence and Legislations that rarer Cases should be ruled by those which are ordinary and therefore should be left to extraordinary Provisions § XI NOW though these actual establishments be plain Arguments that Christ himself has thought it necessary for the ends of Government to confine the conveyance of his Graces ordinarily to our participation of the external Symbols and therefore that it is indeed so seeing it is impossible he should be mistaken concerning it unless we will suppose him as some of our dissenting Brethren seem inclinable to do to act meerly Arbitrarily and without any other reason than his own pleasure which is not agreeable to the clear Notions either of the Divine Wisdom oâ— Goodness Not of his Wisdom to act without any reason at all not of his Goodness to lay such unnecessary useless restraines on his Subjects Liberty and though I may confidently lay the stress of my present design on this proof which must needs be of great weight with them who grant the Supposition I here proceed on concerning the eternal obligation of the Sacraments and withal have honourable thoughts of the Wisdom and Goodness of their Lord and Master in imposing them with such a degree of Obligation And even to them who do not grant it will easily appear from what we shall hereafter discourse concerning the use of the Sacraments themselves particularly for this purpose Though to us who are so weak-sighted and so little acquainted with the Intrigues of his Government the particular reasonableness and usefulness of this way of contrivance for the great ends of his Government might not appear Yet because I am willing to endeavour to give all the satisfaction I am able even to candid Curiosity I shall endeavour to shew
any other ordinary signs not only as most generous and most agreeable with the true design of Christianity but as more really solid and comfortable to the Persons concerned in it But I must not digress further from my present design to shew how it comes to be so All that I am now concerned for in it is only to observe how great an influence the actual performance of the Duties of Christianity have on the good of that Society wherein they are performed when by this means the Members must be so mutually endeared and so strongly inclined to the mutual performance of all good Offices and therefore how very worthy it is of the care of all good Governours but especially of God as the Governour of that Society for which it is more immediately and principally designed and withal how very heinous in Gods sight the Sin of Schism must prove consequently to these Supposals and how very destructive to the comfort of the Persons engaged in it when it is so extremly prejudicial to the Publick CHAP. VI. The same thing further Prosecuted THE CONTENTS § I Both the Ends now mentioned concerning God as a Governour are more likely to be atteined by admitting us to the Benefits of the Covenant by the External Solemnities of it than otherwise § I. 1. That of confederating Us into a Body Politick A short account of the usefullness of the whole Hypothesis promoted in this Discourse for this purpose § II. III.IV.V.VI.VII.VIII.IX.X.XI.XII.XIII.XIV.XV.XVI.XVII.XVIII.XIX.XX.XXI.XXII.XXIII.XXIV.XXV 2. That of securing our performance of Duty § XXVI XXVII.XXVIII.XXIX.XXX.XXXI.XXXII.XXXIII 2. THEREFORE I proceed to prove that both these Ends of confederating us into a Body Politick and of obliging us to the performance of the Duties required on our part are more likely to be atteined by admitting us to the Benefits of the Covenant only by the External Solemnities of it as the Ordinary Means rather than by admitting us to them immediately by our own Resolutions or Promises Both these I shall consider distinctly § II 1. THEN This admitting of us to the Benefits of the Evangelical Covenant only by the external Solemnities of it as the Ordinary Means is very useful for confederating us into a Body Politick and for obliging us to submit to such Governours as those of the Church who may be supposed obnoxious to frequent Persecutions of the Secular Power and then to be left destitute of any thing but their own Sacredness which may aw their refractory Subjects to Obedience For according to the Principles which I have partly proved already and shall partly have occasion to prove further in prosecution of my designed Method I suppose 1. That no Prudent Person can ever be willing to venture his Soul on a less secure way that can obtein a more secure one by any condescensions of less concernment than the thing he ventures As though it be very possible to escape Shipwrack by a plank yet no wise man will ever venture it that may have a Ship by concessions of less concernment to him than the hazard of his Life by such a venture The very fear and probability of his miscarriage in such a Case would be thought sufficient to Oblige him to yield to Conditions otherwise very intolerable if yet they might be less hurtful to him than his present Fears in such a Condition § III AND 2. That the Fear of his Souls miscarriage would be really judged more hurtful by a Prudent Person than any condescension whatsoever how grievous soever if it were not directly sinful Because at least to him his own Soul is his dearest interest and nothing can prejudice that but Sin § IV AND 3. He that wants the Ordinary Means of Salvation and is only to trust to Extraordinaries will have reason to judg himself to be in as great and probable hazard of his Soul as he who in a storm were cast out of a Ship and had nothing given him to favour him in his escape but a plank were of his Body And such a Person were therefore obliged to yield to all conditions not sinful because nothing but Sin could make his condition more desperate or less comfortable to him than that wherein he is thus supposed to be already engaged as in the Parallel condition nothing but Death or that which were worse could make that Persons condition more disconsolate than it is who in a Shipwrack could have nothing but a plank to trust to § V THAT 4. In regard of the Soul the only Ordinary Means of its Salvation is its interest in the Divine Promises at least this is the only Ordinary Means of our Assurance of it § VI THAT 5. The only way of procuring an interest in them is by procuring an interest in the Covenant by which alone it comes to pass that God is Obliged to the performance of them § VII THAT 6. The only Ordinary Means of procuring an interest in this Covenant is by admission to the External Solemnities by which it is ratified and confirmed § VIII THAT 7. These External Solemnities are the two Sacraments And therefore that it will hence follow that all unsinful Conditions however inconvenient are rather to be submitted to than that we should suffer our Selves to be deprived of the use of them And that therefore they and only they who only have the power of administring them and of admitting us to them must by this very contrivance of things be necessarily understood to have a power to impose on us what Constitutions they please that are not sinful And though it be very possible for other Governours who may not be aware of Consequences to give away a greater power to their Inferior Officers by the words of their Commission or by some other subtle Consequence from the nature of the Power intrusted to them than they intended yet this cannot be understood of God who is Omniscient And therefore whatsoever Consequence does follow from the nature of the Government intrusted by him may therefore be concluded to have been by him designed for the Governours so intrusted § IX 8. THEREFORE the administration of these Sacraments and consequently the admission of particular Persons to them is not common to all Christians but only confined to some Persons Authorized for that purpose by God so that if the administration of the External Symbols were attempted by any other such an attempt were not only irregular but invalid and therefore could not confer any Title to the Spiritual Benefits to be conveyed by it but rather a Curse for the Presumption it self in the Person principally guilty and on others also that should prove accessary to it by communicating with him in such his Usurpations § X THAT upon the Supposition of such a confinement all other attempts for gaining the Benefits of the Sacraments from Persons not Authorized to administer them would be invalid ipso jure that is would confer no Legal Title to those Benefits will plainly appear whether we consider God as
of Salvation so it is withal as certain that our participation in the External Solemnities whereby this Covenant is transacted is the only Ordinary Means whereby we may be assured of our Interest in the Covenant and that God has neither instituted nor is pretended by our Brethren themselves to have instituted any other External Solemnities of transacting this Covenant besides the Sacraments But because I am now considering the Sacraments under another Notion not as Solemnities of transacting the Covenant but in relation to those Graces for the communication whereof they were particularly designed and instituted by God himself that which I am at present concerned to prove will be that the Graces hereby conveyed are such as that without them Salvation cannot ordinarily be expected and withal that they are such as that God has instituted no other ordinary way of giving them besides the Sacraments Both these I shall endeavour to prove together as I have already exprest them in the Proposition § VII THIS I shall endeavour from two Topicks 1. By excluding the other Ordinary Means of gaining that Grace which is requisite either for Salvation it self or at least for our Assurance of it besides the Sacraments And 2. By shewing directly that the Grace conferred in the Sacraments is of such a nature as to suppose the Persons to whom it has not yet been given in an unsalvable Condition From the former it will principally appear that the Grace is not otherwise to be expected Ordinarily than by the Sacraments From the later That this Grace is such as that Salvation cannot Ordinarily be expected without it § VIII 1. THEREFORE I shall endeavour to disprove those other Ordinary Means which are or may be pretended to by them who are out of the Communion of the Church And they are especially two either the hearing of the Word Preached or private Prayer The former will at least so far serve our purpose as to oblige Men to depend on some Assemblies and consequently on the power of those who alone enjoy the power of calling such Assemblies or at least to depend on the Preachers But the later is such as if it be allowed to be an Ordinary Means of obteining that Grace which is necessary for Salvation will excuse Men not only from all Sacraments but from all Assemblies too and will allow a liberty to those who joyn with no Party at all on pretence of the sufficiency of their Closet-Devotions Which is a thing I am therefore the more willing to warn them of that none may venture to defend this later way till they have first considered how they can give an account of this dangerous Consequence of it And the same Inconvenience will much more concern them who conceive the Moral Duties of Faith and Repentance to be sufficient for obteining this Evangelical Grace which is necessary for our Salvation But of this Opinion I shall say no more now both because I have considered it already and because it must necessarily fall if I suceed in my present undertaking § IX THE first Ordinary Means therefore pretended for obteining the Grace of the Gospel independently on the Sacraments is the Word But before I oppose this I shall first lay down some Cautions from which it may appear how far I am indeed concerned to oppose it 1. Therefore if by the Word be understood the subsistent Word whether the fontal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Christ himself or the derivative as the Spirit which is given to us upon our becoming Christians in regard whereof Christ himself is said to be (a) Gal. iv 19 formed in us (b) 2 Cor. iv 10 Col. iii. 4 St. Joh. xiv 6 1 Joh. i. 1.2 to live in us to be (c) Gal. ii 20 crucifyed and (d) Rom. vi 4 Col. ii 10 buried in us and We are said on account of this living Spirit which we receive from him to (e) 1 Cor. xv 49 Comp. wiith Ver. 45. bear his Image as by our (f) Ib. 1 Cor. xv 45.49 Souls we bear the Image of Adam I then conceive my self so far from being concerned to deny that by this Word we receive all the Graces of the Gospel as that indeed it is from hence that I infer the necessity of Sacraments as the only Ordinary Means of partaking of the Word in this sense And yet it is very much to be suspected that some of the places produced by our Adversaries for proving the efficacy of the Word are only to be understood of the Word in this sense So in 1 Pet. 1.23 Where we are said to be born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the Word of God which lives and abides for ever The abiding for ever here is not so naturally intelligible of the permanency of the Decrees of God as (g) Ps. cxix 89 elsewhere this Phrase is used as of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 within us For the Argument here produced is to prove the permanency of our new life to which we are here born that that should also endure for ever because it is the fruit of this incorruptible seed But for that it had not been so proper to argue the incorruptibleness of the effects of the Divine Decrees because the same Decrees which are the reasons why some things are incorruptible are also the reason why others are corruptible But the subsistent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a very proper Argument for concluding the incorruptibleness of those things which partake of it In this sense Life is an usual Epithete of this Word And from our partaking of this quickening Spirit the Apostle concludes the necessity of our immortality and resurrection 1 Cor. xv The only difficulty is that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here spoken of is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ver. 25. And yet if St. h 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Justin Martyr understood the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Orphaicks of this subsistent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it must seem less strange in the Hebrew Idiom according to which it is so very ordinary to put Words for Things None can doubt but that the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is as properly rendred by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek as by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the same way also it may probably be understood in St. James 1.18 Where our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the Word of Truth is opposed to the birth whereby Concupiscence is said to bring forth Sin and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereby Sin when it is consummated brings forth Death Ver. 15. But this is not so likely to be understood either of the Doctrines of Concupiscence or Sin as of the things themselves And therefore it will be also much more suitable to understand our Regeneration by the Word rather of that Subsistent Being which is so called in the ordinary language of those times than of the Doctrine of the Gospel § X 2. IF by
Call And however express Promises might have been found to assure our expectation of the like influences in hearing the word Preached even in our present Age yet certainly their actual performance could not be expected in the hearing of any but Authorized Persons as no Supreme Prince can in reason be thought obliged to ratifie or second what any Rebel or Usurper should presume to proclaim or promise in his name The boldness of such an attempt is so far from a just title to a confirmation from the Lawful Prince as that it is always thought to deserve the most exemplary punishment And if this be the Case it will serve my end as well as if these influences of the Spirit were thought to be confined to the Sacraments themselves For this will oblige all to as strict a dependance on the Governours of the Church as the other For both the Episcopal Clergy will be found to have as just an Authority and the Non-Conformists as unjust a one to Preach the Word as to administer the Sacraments and it is as much in their power to whom they will Preach as to whom they will administer the Elements and consequently it will be also as much in their power to impose Conditions for the one as for the other And indeed my whole design in confining these expectations to the Sacraments is only by this means to confine them to the regularly-ordeined Clergy on account of that Right which they alone have to administer these Sacraments But though these Influences had been granted always to accompany the Word preached and by whomsoever preached yet it were fit to be considered farther § XX 5. WHETHER this Grace accompanying this Ordinance be so great as to be able to supply the want of the Sacraments at least so great as to secure the Salvation of those who enjoy this Ordinance whilest they want the Sacraments That this may appear it will be absolutely necessary that either no grace at all be conveyed by the Sacraments which may not also be expected in hearing the Word or that if any be conveyed at least it be not such as is necessary to Salvation For if any Grace necessary to Salvation be communicated by the Sacraments which is not communicated by Preaching then still the Sacraments may be also necessary for the Salvation of such a Person who still enjoys the Ordinance of Preaching and therefore he may still be obliged to submit to all unsinful Impositions in order to the obteining these Sacraments which on these accounts will appear so necessary for his Salvation But this cannot be much as plausibly pretended from any of the Texts produced for this purpose by our Brethren Where are there any Texts that mention the pardon of their Sins or the sanctification or acceptance of their Persons or their actual reconciliation barely on account of that Grace which they had received in their attendance on the Word preached Where are they said to be thereby united to Christ to be made members of his Body and to be thereby intitled to his constant vital influences These are the effects of the Sacraments and whatever Grace may be otherwise supposed communicated in hearing the Word preached yet if it fall short of these it must also consequently fall short of administring any solid security for the Salvation of the Persons so concerned But where is it indeed that they can find that either the Persons who had received this Grace or the Apostles who were sufficiently satisfied that they had received it ever thought them secure without that additional Grace which they were further to expect in the Sacraments Nay where is it that after the receiving of this Grace they do not immediately hasten to Baptism Nay they are urged and importuned by their Converters to do so Acts II. 37 Can they deny that the pricking of the heart in St. Peters Auditors was an effect of that Grace which accompanied the Word preached by him Yet after this we find the Persons themselves further solicitous what they should do v. 37 38. We find St. Peter further advising them to repent every one of them and to be Baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and that so they should receive the Holy Ghost Whence it appears that as yet they had not received pardon or the Holy Ghost Nay further he advises and exhorts them to save themselves from that untoward Generation v. 40 a plain sign that all that had been yet done was not sufficient for their Salvation What do they think of the Ethiopian converted by St. Philip He seems to have been a Proselyte of the Gates at least because he came up to Jerusalem to worship Acts VIII 27 And he had received all the Grace of the Word read as well as preached Nay he had professed to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God v. 30 37. Yet all this satisfied not him without Baptism v. 36 38. And certainly they cannot think the Grace received by St. Paul himself in his miraculous conversion inferior to any that had been received by them who had been converted by the Word preached And the effects were answerable upon him As soon as he had been struck down he immediately cryes out with trembling and astonishment Acts IX 6 Lord what wouldest thou have me to do v. 11 And he was praying when Ananias was sent to him And it should seem to be his excessive pensiveness upon that Providence that occasioned his fasting for three days together v. 9 What moral Dispositions could our Brethren themselves have required more from him for his Salvation Yet see how Ananias accosts him And now why tarriest thou Acts XXII 16 Arise and be baptized and wash away thy Sins calling upon the name of the Lord. It seems then as yet his Sins were not washed away and this was it that obliged him to make all possible hast to be baptized And yet the Case of Cornelius was more remarkable He was as to his Person a devout Man Acts X. 2 and one who feared God and did many almes Nay he had also this Testimony that his Prayers and almes had been accepted by God v. 4 31. And upon St. Peters preaching to him he received so plentiful a proportion of these gifts of the Spirit which accompany the Word preached as amazed his Spectators v. 45 Yet all this was not thought sufficient to supersede the necessity of Baptism or to delay it but was rather thought an Argument to intitle him to it Even Lydia whose heart God is said to have opened and whose example our Brethren do so much insist on for proving this efficacy of the Word preached v. 47 48. Acts XVI 14 15. did not think her self thereby the more excused either from receiving or hastening her Baptism v. 29 30. So in the Case of the Jaylor whose excellent demeanour to St. Paul and Silas even before his
had told them before that (d) Chap. iii. 9 he that is born of God sinneth not nay cannot sin he therefore adds that every unrighteousness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 opposed to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in the Hellenistical style is frequently taken for that eminent degree of Righteousness which the (e) Cicer. Off. L.i. Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is every failure of an eminent degree of Righteousness which might be very capable of befalling even Righteous Persons themselves but Righteous in an inferiour degree was sin and that by this means it came to be very possible that there might be a sin not unto Death Which exactly agrees with what he had said (f) Chap. i. 7 8 9 10. ii 1 2. before concerning these sins even of such Persons but especially where he said If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous And he is the propitiation for our sins For that is certainly the ground of the * 1 Joh. v. 14 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentioned here For Christ is by his Office an Advocate for all his Church but not for those who are out of it especially as their case stood then with them who maintained other false Christs in opposition to him § XI And so on the contrary considering also that (g) Chap. v. 12 he who has not the Son has not Life and he who has not Life is certainly in a state of Death therefore whatever sin does deprive of this Communion with the Son that must consequently be a sin unto Death It must be unto Death both as it self deprives of the principle of Life and as it makes all the other sins and lapses such a person may be guilty of unpardonable though he should amend them without a change of his state by depriving him of the benefit of Christs Intercession for him by vertue whereof alone he can expect that any Prayers himself can make for pardon can prove acceptable Now that such a Person cannot expect the Benefit of the Intercession of Christ I have already proved from the Doctrine of the same Apostle in his Gospel § XII And that they did not then think it lawful to pray for Persons out of the Churches Communion especially for such as had separated themselves from it for concerning such only the Apostle speaks and concerning such alone I desire to be understood nay that they thought such Prayers to be sins and so disagreeable to the will of God as was implied in the passage already mentioned appears plainly from the second Epistle where the Author charges them to whom he wrote that (h) 2 Joh. x. 11 if any came unto them and did not bring with him the Doctrine of the true Christ they should not receive him into their houses not give him the jus Hospitii which was then a part of Communion nay more than so should not bid him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the usual Greek form of civil Salutation at their first meeting to which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was answerable at their parting And that for this reason because he that should bid him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should thereby make himself a partaker of his evil deeds By which it appears that he who used only this civil Salutation to such a Person sinned in doing so and yet of all Prayers this seems to have had the least of a Prayer in it § XIII I dare not indeed altogether deny a possibility of pardon to be obtained for such Persons as are out of the Churches Communion upon their coming over to it and their prayers for Pardon For the same Apostle expresly tells us that Christ is the (a) 1 Joh. ii 1 Propitiation not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world Where certainly the whole World opposed to us must imply those who are at present out of the Communion of the Church And seeing Christ is the Propitiation even for their sins also they also may expect to have their Prayers for pardon heard on his account upon condition of their repentance and entring into the Churches Communion And accordingly they are also mentioned in our Saviours Intercession where he also prays for them who should afterwards (b) Joh. xvii 20 believe on him on the Apostles Preaching And therefore also St. Paul exhorts that (c) 1 Tim. ii 1 Prayers c. should be offered for all men and says it is good and acceptable to God to do so for this reason because he wills (d) Ver. 3 4. that all men should be saved and come unto the knowledg of the Truth and that Christ has therefore also given himself (e) Ver. 6. a ransome for all So Cornelius's Prayers were heard (f) Act. x. 4 before his Baptism But all this might be true though all men were allowed only once the liberty of being admitted into the Church And it is certain that the case of Desertors is described in the Scriptures as much more desperate than it would have been if they had never been of the Communion deserted by them As all Persons who were out of the Communion of the Church were supposed to be under the power of the Devil and accordingly casting out of the Church is the same thing with (g) 1 Cor. v. 5 delivering over to Satan so our Saviour himself describes the condition of a Desertor to be so much worse than it was at his first reception and his last end to be so much worse than the first that if he had one Devil at his first reception he has (h) Matt. xii 43 44 45. Luk. xi 24 25 26. seven which is usually the number used in Scripture for perfection at his Desertion and those more wicked than that which first possessed him So also St. Peter (i) 2 Pet. ii 21 It had been better for them that they had not known the way of Righteousness than having known it to turn from the holy commandment which had been given them For it is happened to them according to the true Proverb The dog is returned to his own vomit and the sow that is washed to her wallowing in the mire § XIV And particularly the Doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews is very severe in this case especially that passage in the tenth Chapter where having perswaded them not to (k) Heb. x. 25 forsake the assembling of themselves together as the manner of some was He immediately gives this reason why they should not do so (l) V. 26 27. For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledg of the Truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin but a certain fearful looking for of Judgment and fiery indignation which should devour the adversaries Here by the connexion it is very plain that the forsaking of the Assemblies the visible Communion of the Church is the sin here spoken of which will also give light to other
visible constituents of such a Society as this is Baptism is the solemn admission of Members into the Church And how can Multitudes make up a Church who were never admitted into it How can they make a compleat Church who have no Power of admitting new Members At least how can they secure succession and continue to be a Church without this Power of admitting new Members The result therefore of this Discourse will be that if these Principles hold true that they can never so much as abstein from the Episcopal Communion for any conditions required from them which are not more intolerable than the want of all Church Society and of the comfort of the Ordinances And if this comfort be so great as our Adversaries themselves do usually confess it to be there can be but few cases which can even excuse this forbearance of Communion § IV BUT in Case the Impositions should prove so unlawful as to be greater mischiefs to him who should submit to them than could be recompensed by the advantage of the Communion yet even in this Case he ought also to abstein from all opposite Communion For on this supposition their Baptism will be no Baptism nor consequently can the Members admitted by their Baptism be true Church-Members which if they be not no number of them how great soever can ever make a Church And then all they act as a Church that is by any Authority pretended to be derived from God must not only prove a perfect Nullity that is infer no obligation on God to perform those Spiritual benefits which if validly administred they would have obliged him to perform but be also a Crime highly punishable by the Principles of Government even the usurping an Authority which had never been Legally committed to them And then though the supposed unlawfulness of the Imposition might excuse them whose consciences were so perswaded that the Impositions were unlawful from that Communion which could not be had without such Impositions yet it could never excuse them for venturing the guilt of a sin and especially of a sin of so heinous a nature as that is of abetting as well as of assuming an usurped Authority And therefore the safest way for such Persons would be to abstein from all Communion till they may recover that by lawful complyances which had been lost by having unlawful ones expected from them and in the mean time to observe punctually the Moral Duties which all acknowledg eternally obligatory of Faith and Repentance till God shall be pleased to restore them to lawful means of enjoying the Rituals of Religion § V AND if men might be perswaded even thus far two consequences would follow of very great importance for the preservation and maintenance of Catholick Peace The first is that even the absteining of Pious Persons from the lawful Communion would be very rare For nothing would oblige such to abstein but such compliances as would be more mischievous than the lawful Communion could be beneficial And to such Persons who had experienced and relished the comfort of the Ordinances very few things would appear so mischievous as a deprivation of those comforts which they had enjoyed in these Ordinances This therefore would oblige all such Persons to all sincere endeavours after such Information as might bring them to the sentiments of their Superiors and withall would take them off from all haughtiness and willfullness of humour so that nothing would be able to keep off such Persons from compliance but the true importance of the Cause And they who were willing to yield and to receive better information nay very heartily and sincerely desirous of it that they might thereby obtain the comfort of Ordinances so much valued by them could not frequently fail of so much conviction as might suffice for Peace if it did not bring them altogether to the sence of their superiors § VI A SECOND Consequence would be that even those few pious Persons who after all diligence used to inform themselves and all lawful condescendence could not submit to the terms of the lawful Communion would yet never perpetuate so much as their Non-Communion For as long as they formed no Parties nor joyned with any which were already formed their differences must naturally extinguish with their Persons which would at least secure the Churches Communion intire for the next generation And this must also be a great comfort to such Persons that they could thus reconcile their duty to God with the Peace of the Church and at once secure themselves from the sin of compliance and from the great mischief at least if it should not prove to be a sin of being accessary to Ecclesiastical division This sure would be the Case if men were thus far convinced and were withall as truly humble and sincere and conscientious in this matter as they pretend to be § VII THESE two things are of so great importance for the preservation of Peace and Government as that I cannot think but God would take care to secure them if he ever intended any preservation of either of them And in this regard this Doctrine seems rather agreeable to the mind of God because it does so effectually secure them This premisal may suffice to warn the Reader how sufficient this is for my purpose that Baptism at least is such a means without which Salvation cannot ordinarily be expected and that the Episcopal Communion is necessary for securing a valid Baptism Whence it will follow that though we had not that evidence of the like necessity of the Eucharist as we have of the necessity of Baptism yet our Cause were not like to suffer for want of it § VIII A SECOND thing to be premised is this That it cannot be expected that this Sacrament of the Lords Supper should be as necessary as that of Baptism I know some of the Ancients who understand the passage of St. Joh. vi of the Lord's Supper inferred thence that it was as necessary for the Salvation even of Infants as Baptism it self was But I have not now to do with those who are of that opinion And as I dare not undertake to defend it so I do not conceive my self obliged to do so by any concernment of my present design I cannot but think that the benefit conferred in Baptism of forgiveness of former sins and the infusion of the Holy Ghost are sufficient for Salvation so long as Persons continue in that Spiritual strength and purity which they had in Baptism I am sure our own Church thinks so Rubr. at the end of the Office of publick Baptism of Infants and I think it might easily have been proved that the antienter Ages of the Primitive Church those of them at least which passed before the Pelagian Controversies were of the same mind And if we judg of it by allusion to the customs of the Heathen Mysteries from whence as I said the Copy of the Christian Sacraments seems to have been taken they were
more severely accountable who on insufficient inducements ventures to practise a Proposition which is not only false but mischievous than he who on the same inducements should venture to practise one which were only false And according as this mischief is greater so the contrary evidence ought to be greater too that it may countervail this mischief when this mischief is considered in Conscience as a reason of such Practice And as it is fit that the Practiser of such dangerous Propositions should be obliged to take in the reasons which may prove them dangerous as well as those which may prove them true so it is fit that he be also obliged to the utmost diligence in procuring Information and the utmost sincerity in following conviction before he venture on such a Practice This is also as necessary for the publick as the other But it cannot so conveniently be done as by making him afterwards more severely responsible for his failings in either regard here than he should have been in matter of lesser concernment § XIV AND 5. All these Reasons will particularly hold in those places where these Vsurpations are in danger of proving injurious to the Rights even of Subordinate Governours that is where this Liberty is taken in a place already settled under Ecclesiastical Government especially where the Persons pretending to the Possession of that Government have those Presumptions in favour of their Possession which ought not to be rejected without very solid proofs to the contrary § XV I HAVE already noted how the Supreme Government is in interest obliged to maintain the honour of Subordinate Governours as it tenders the execution of its Laws in this Life which is peculiarly the office of Subordinate Governours And this obligation increases according as the Subordinate Governours approach nearer to the Supreme Even among Subordinate Governours themselves the Supreme is more concerned for the Superior than for the Inferior not only as that distance is necessary for preserving the Sacredness of the Supreme but also because its own Authority is in the most ample manner communicated to the Superior among Subordinate Governours And ordinary experience shews that they who have already despised so many degrees of distance as to resist the Supreme among the Subordinates cannot be thought scrupulous of one degree more from resisting him to proceed further to the resistance of the Supreme of all § XVI BUT even among Subordinates themselves it is the interest of Government that the Presumption lye on the side of Governours especially then when even such Subordinate Governours profess themselves dissatisfied with the pretence and recourse cannot be had to the Supreme Governour to know his mind in the Case The concealments which have been used by some Princes to conciliate a greater veneration to their Majesty has been so far from diminishing as that it has always made the Authority of their appearing Officers more absolute and arbitrary And accordingly the Authority of Governours of Provinces is always allowed greater than that of those where the access is easier to the Princes Person But where the recourse is not to be had at all where the falshood of such Pretenders cannot be discovered in this Life as that is the Church's Case there it must follow that the allowing such Precedents must overthrow the possibility of all visible Government in this Life And therefore God will be so far concerned to see that no resistance be made against the Supreme visible Governours of his Church in this Life on such pretences as these as he is concerned that any Government be at all practised in this Life § XVII BUT it is not possible to preserve this honour which is due to inferiour Governours if Subjects be allowed a Liberty as often as they are of another mind to set up another Society in opposition to them and to be able to perpetuate such their disorders by the validity of what they do in such their Vsurpations Nor can it be fit that Subjects be allowed to judg in doubtful Cases of their Governours failings and acting against the design of the Supreme Governour especially where recourse cannot be had to the Supreme Governour himself for determining their difference It is certainly inconsistent with the safety of Societies in general to have any differences that shall not be capable of a decision in this Life They may indeed judg with a Judgment of private discretion and for the security of their own Souls even from what they think sinful But to allow them a Liberty in such Cases to set up opposite Societies is certainly destructive to all Government § XVIII AND what should be the reason that God should give Governours who have truly a title to govern a power of admitting Members into their respective Societies or of ejecting them out of them but purposely to make them hereby responsible for all the Members of their Societies when none could be so without their consent How could the Angels in the Revelations have been otherwise charged with the misdemeanours of particular Members of their Churches unless it had been in their power either to have reformed them or to have cut them off from being Members But this will be impossible if unauthorized Persons may be allowed in matters so disputable as not to be capable of a Decision in this Life to set up opposite Societies and to admit Members into them within the Jurisdiction of their Subordinate Governour yet without their Governours consent and if withall God should so far second their Vsurpations as to account their Churches valid Churches and their Members valid Members and well intitled to the Legal priviledges of such Societies and to oblige the Church Governours within whose Jurisdiction and without whose consent they had been made Members to account them so too When they would thus have Members obtruded on them without their own consent and when their own rebellious Members might upon their departure or exclusion from them be allowed to erect themselves into a Society independent on them it were very hard that they should be made responsible for either of them § XIX NOR is it only thus inconsistent with Government that Subjects should be allowed this Liberty of erecting opposite Societies to their Subordinate Governours on their own judgments in matters disputable but also that upon their own unsatisfiedness with their title to govern them they should be allowed to refuse the payment of their Duty to them especially when they have on their side all the presumptions of an actual possession and so far to refuse it as to erect or abete a Government opposite to them There are two things in this Case wherein God will in reason be obliged for the security of visible Government to discountenance and invalidate such proceedings 1. That it is for the necessary security of visible Government that a presumptive title be not rejected but on very evident proof◠to the contrary 2. That in case this presumptive title should fail in
b That of St. Timothy Prophets which assisted in their Synaxes or of the c Those of the choice â—f St. Gregory Thaumaturgus for Bishop of Neocaesarea by the Bishop who ordained him and of the ordination of Alexander Carbonarius by the same Thaumaturgus Greg. Nyssen in vit Thaum ordeiners themselves or by some signs d As in the Case of Alexander chosen Bishop of Hierusalem Euseb. Hist. given before by God or by some extraordinary appearances e As in the case of Fabian Bishop of Rome Eus. Hist. in the Persons elected Yet even when this was done this only determined the Persons and the Ordeiners still remained Judges whether the indications were satisfactory which was a power sufficient even then to oblige all such Persons to the most rigorous dependence on them And accordingly when even they were satisfied then and not till then they proceeded to Ordination where that was prescribed as it seems to have been in all the Constitutions of ordinary Governours And from their ordination all the validity of the exercise of their Authority began its date § XXXVII IF this be the true meaning of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of St. John after his return from Patmos so long after St. Clement had written his Epistle where he tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Ep. ad Corinth that the Apostles had before that taken care for mainteining their Succession and if St. John did not deviate from the precedent of the other Apostles and if this were the original of the appropriation of the name of Clerus to the sacred function as we see very soon after it was appropriated it will follow that it will also be most likely that this was the course prescribed by the Apostles for succession when as yet we know that these Extraordinaries had not failed and when withal we do not know whether the Apostles did know that they should ever fail For God may undoubtedly conceal many Truths from many true Prophets though he cannot be an Author of error to any of them And though afterwards as the experience of these extraordinary manifestations by degrees failed the Primitive Christians they were at length necessitated to prudential means for continuing this Power yet from this concession that this was the state of Succession immediately appointed by the Apostles themselves two things will follow very apposite to my purpose One that they thought the Ecclesiastical Power immediately proper to God himself and far exceeding any inherent right of the People the other that as this Power did not belong to the People by any original inherent right in them so neither was it conveyed to them by any act of the Apostles in their life time or by the course designed by them for the continuance of Succession § XXXVIII NOR is it likely that the Apostles would confer this right of Government on the People if we suppose them left to their own liberty concerning it We know the Eastern Nations generally from whom the Doctrine of the Gospel came to us were observed to be more addicted to Monarchy than any other form of Government And though I know those Philosophical Sects the Platonists and Pythagoraeans especially were for Republican Principles yet all the effect they seem to have had on those Eastern Nations seems only to have been this that they disliked the absoluteness not the form of Government in a single Person This I think was all that could have been meant by Josephus when he makes Samuel averse to the motion of the Israelites for a King on account of his dislike of Monarchy For if by Monarchy he had understood the Government of a single Person under reasonable restraints he could not be ignorant that Samuel himself was such a Monarch But that which must in all likelihood have made the converts to the Christian Religion more favourable to Monarchy than to any other form of Government must have been the great usefulness of this Topick of the excellency of Monarchy above other forms of Government against their common Gentile Adversaries This was one of the principal Topicks they insisted on against the Gentile Polytheism Philo Justin Mart. de Monarch On this Subject they wrote intire Discourses To this purpose they produce all the Testimonies of Philosophers and Poets that speak in favour of Monarchy in general whether with application to Divine things or without it To this purpose they urge Arguments taken from the convenience of this Government among Creatures nay even among men themselves And is it probable that these same Persons should erect a new Government in Practice so different from that which they had so much commended above it in their disputes that they would for a matter of so small consequence to them as the particular form of Government when without it they might still enjoy the benefit of Government under another form overthrow the principal Argument for the most fundamental Principle of revealed Religion that they would for it have exposed themselves to the just suspicions of disingenuity of practising so differently from their Principles They must in all likelihood have been more inclinable to think that they meant as they saw them practise than as they saw them argue And though they had forgotten the advantage they had given their Adversaries by this way of proceeding yet is it probable that their Adversaries would forget it too Could they forget such an Argument for blasting the reputation of their Persons when withal the disrepute of their Persons would go so far as it might go then for overthrowing the credit of the Religion preached by them On all these accounts it is very unlikely that the Apostles did by their settlement for Posterity confer any new right of Government upon the People besides that which was originally inherent in them § XXXIX BUT before I dismiss this Argument it will not be amiss to make some remarks upon it to let men see how far this alone may go for the satisfaction of Persons sincerely inquisitive for Truth and Peace 1. Then this way of arguing from the actual establishments of God as it is much more modest so it is also much more secure for finding out the right of Government than any conjectures we can make from the reason of the thing It is certainly the most becoming course for a modest Christian in all things to acquiesce in Gods Judgment how great evidence soever there might seem for differing from it And sure there is great reason to believe that what the Apostles did in a matter of so great consequence for the security of the Christian Religion as the settlement of Rules of Government to be observed for all posterity they did by a direction more infallible than their humane Ecclesiastical Prudence And there is the rather reason to ascribe much to their settlement in this Question when it is truly stated For I do not at present argue the obligingness of their settlement to us now
any farther than our circumstances are the same as those were which were foreseen at their settlement If our circumstances be not the same they might have been very prudent in their provisions for settlement and yet we very imprudent in following their precedent in those provisions All that I infer from their settlement is only this that it is no way likely that they did believe that the People had any such inherent right in the Ecclesiastical Government as our Brethren conceive them to have and which the reasons and Authorities produced by them in this Argument prove if they prove any thing For it is not likely that they would have deprived them of any thing which was their right considering of how dangerous consequence it might have been to the progress of the Gospel it self for them to have done so and considering withal how much their Authority was questioned in those times But rather from the great silence with which these Rules were settled we have reason to conclude not only that the Apostles did not intend to deprive them of any right but also that the Multitude themselves who were concerned in them did not think themselves deprived of any And the very actual judgment of those times are much better assurances of the truth of this matter than our Adversaries present conjectures and much more than any of those reasons on which they are capable of grounding their conjectures They cannot think themselves at this distance better qualified for understanding the Scriptures than they were who wrote the Scriptures or than they for whose immediate use and in accommodation to whose language and circumstances they were written § XL AS for the reasons they made use of for informing themselves in this matter besides that the utmost they can make of them is only conjectural and the conjectures they make by them are not so probable as the motives of credibility of those Ages I say besides this there are other prudent inducements which might in reason make one more confident of the judgment of those Ages than of those Reasons We know no reasons which they could not know as well as we but they knew many of which we now are ignorant and besides were much better able to judg of the same reasons which we both know than we are We know none which they could not know For the reasons from the nature of Government in general and peculiarly of Government as Ecclesiastical are not proper to any one Age. But for bringing these reasonings down to determine the rights of any particular Government many particular matters of fact are requisite to be known of which they were undoubtedly better Judges than we are They better knew the actual design of the Sacraments what benefits were intended by them and how they would oblige men to a dependence on them who had the power of administring them They better knew the precedents from whence they were taken and the actual state how those precedents were observed by them from whom they were taken And they who knew these things could much better judg whether they were such as would allow the people any right in the Government They certainly knew the actual challenges of the people and the actual condescensions that were made to them they knew what was quietly received and what was either not received at all or received with contradiction And they who knew these things much better than we do must also have known much better what either was or was then thought to be the Peoples right in this matter of Government I only now mention those advantages they had above us in regard of the times they lived in not in regard of those many Prophets and other inspired Persons whom they could then consult and by whose assistance they might know many things certainly which without them we can only know conjecturally though we had the best information that reason is able to afford us § XLI A SECOND thing I could wish observed in relation to this Argument is this That though the People had this inherent right of Government originally as our Brethren pretend them to have had yet it cannot exclude a right of God who can when he pleases take the right into his own hands Which when he would be pleased to do Subjects were as much obliged to submit to his disposal of them as if they never had any right of disposing of themselves I have already given my reasons elsewhere and shall not now repeat them I only observe at present how much safer it is on this account also to acquiesce in Gods actual establishment than to trust to our reasonings from the nature of the thing which are much more uncertain and unsecure as to our Duty For supposing that by the reason of the thing we should find that the People might by their internal right pretend a title to dispose of the Government this might indeed take them off from making any further enquiry into Gods actual establishment but could not in the mean time secure their practice For if by his actual establishment he had reserved the right of Government wholly in his own hand and had actually subjected us to his own Rules he that should insist on that right of the People for defending himself against these actual impositions could not be excused by that pretence for his disobedience For though the People might have had a right if God had left them to themselves to prescribe or abrogate Rules for the Government of themselves yet in case God has made use of his own Prerogative they cannot then pretend to such a right because God has prevented it And he who in that Case should refuse obedience would be a rebel against God though he broke no compacts made by the People whether with or without his particular consent This will shew that how conclusive soever the reasons be yet for security of practice all must be obliged to depend on Gods actual establishment Which may let our Brethren see their obligation to enquire into this for the security of their Practice § XLII A THIRD Observation is this that if the People ever had any such original right yet all has been done for alienating it that could be done Whatever could be done by the Rule left by the Apostles for Succession by whatever Authority they are supposed to have acted whether as Apostles of Jesus Christ or as Apostles of the Churches whatever could be done by the act of the Multitudes themselves submitting to and owning the exercise of Authority in the Officers and never pretending any power afterwards to resume their own right if it had been so nor to practise any branch of it in calling Officers to an account for mal-administration how notoriously soever they were guilty of it whatever could be done by their own disowning any such right for many Ages and Successions and confirming the sentences of their Superiors against such Persons as challenged such rights in their
on the Persons who were to be tryed Though it is also very observable that even in that Age wherein these extraordinary means were used yet because they were not evident to any but them to whom they were made at least not certainly therefore even then they were not intended immediately for the Multitude but for the satisfaction of the Ordeiners who when they were themselves by these means informed of the qualifications of the Persons to be ordeined then invested them with the Powers So that as it is most probable even then that it was not their gifts of which these extraordinary discoveries were only testimonies but the Solemnities of this investiture that immediately gave them the Power it self so it is much more certain that in this way of proceeding the judgment of the ordeiners concerning the sufficiency of these evidences and the testimony given by them by the act of ordination it self were even then the only assurances by which the vulgar were enabled to judg concerning the Authority of any who were placed over them even by God himself And therefore in this way of tryal none could be presumed to have Authority from God but they whom the ordinary Governours judged to have received it Which will as to all intents of Practice oblige them to as near a dependence on the ordinary Governours of the Church as if they had received their Authority from those Governours themselves And certainly the reason will be much more cogent to oblige them to a dependence on Governours who can make out no better a title to the Call it self than what they can receive from the Governours than those who might pretend that their obligation to depend on them was only for their approbation in the exercise of the Authority committed to them not for deriving the Authority it self These if their pretence was true could only be punished for the disorderliness of their proceeding but they who derive their Power not from any supernatural gifts received by them antecedently to their ordination but from their ordination it self must expect that their proceedings be not only disorderly but invalid if they presume to exercise any Divine Authority not received by Ordination § VIII HENCE therefore I infer 4. That God did leave them to those ordinary means of judging concerning the right of their Governours which had been usual among them in judging concerning their secular Governours These were best suited to vulgar understanding that they might the same way judg of the title of their Spiritual Governours by which even they had been used and often been obliged to judg of the title of their secular Governours and the better such means are suited to popular understandings by so much they must prove more serviceable to the great end of Government They must have been more easily applicable to this particular design of Government than any new means that could have been introduced for this purpose and it is always to be presumed that all prudent Governours would rather make use of present means than any other if they may withal serve their ends as well In such a Case the very avoiding innovation is a very considerable advantage of such a means above any other Besides it was to be presumed that these were the means intended if no express provision was made for any other For we are to consider the present customs and Notions of that Age as the matter of their Revelations to be reformed where they were amiss and to be assured where they were uncertain especially where the Subject was of consequence And therefore where something was necessary to be practised and no new order was taken for the introduction of any thing new there it was most natural to presume that Christ did not think fit to make any alteration and therefore that he was pleased with what was already received § IX CERTAINLY we have reason to believe that this was most likely to be the reasoning of that Age and therefore if it had been a mistake he would in all likelihood have prevented it especially in the first beginnings of Christianity not only in regard of the moment of the thing so far as that Age it self was concerned in it but also in regard of the ill influence a mistake in that Age must have on all succeeding Ages and the great difficulty of ever reforming any such mistake afterwards when the mistake should have the advantage of a present possession and the averseness which is natural to men against changing any thing that had such possession when also such a possession received from such Persons who had best reason to know what was fit to be received would pass for a Presumption against the right of innovating any thing and when withal the credentials of Persons who would afterwards be desirous to reform them should decay as this Prescription and Presumption would grow stronger and prevail more on the minds of men This therefore being supposed that the Scriptures silence concerning any new provision is a strong presumption that the sacred Writers and the Apostles whose History they wrote never intended any this I say will let our Brethren see how insufficient their reasoning is from this silence of the Scripture concerning any certain Rule prescribed for Succession to conclude against any confinement of this Power to those certain Persons through whose hands this Succession is to be continued when by this means of management it is proved to be an Argument of the contrary And they must needs apprehend it as a great distress to their Cause to be obliged to produce any direct or positive Arguments either to disprove this confinement of the Power to Persons in Authority for the time being for maintaining Succession or to prove that they who pretend to an Authority which they have not received from their Superiors can justifie their claim by any other solid Principles Yet to this distress they must needs be reduced by this Observation § X 5. THEREFORE If this be the Case indeed that God intended that the Spiritual Power should be the same way derived to Posterity as the Temporal Power is then the matter will be plain that none may pretend to this Spiritual Power but they who have received it from those men to whom it was first committed For in deriving Temporal Power this method is still observed punctually not only that they who are Authorized by them who first received the Authority are validly Authorized but that none else are so And this Negative that none may pretend to Power but they who have received it from those men who had at first a Power to give it has by all wise Legislators been thought as necessary to oblige inferior Governours to a dependence on their Superiors as this dependence has been also thought necessary for the practicableness of all visible Government Besides where-ever Princes are obliged in extraordinary Cases to give extraordinary commands and Authority to some particular Persons without the formalities of
qualifications whatever proportion be requisite for publick service they must admit all those whom they judg qualified and admit none but such if the qualifications alone be supposed to intitle to the Authority But if any may be rejected whom they think qualified or any admitted whom they do not judg qualified either of these are sufficient to shew that qualifications alone cannot be conceived sufficient to intitle to Authority And yet this is all that can be thought of how the Scriptures can be thought to design particular Persons for Authority that they may indeed describe and particularize those qualifications which may fit a Person when he is known to have them for Authority CHAP. XXI Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived to this Age without a continued Succession THE CONTENTS 3. This Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived from those men to whom it was at first committed to the age we live in without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them § I. 1. This Authority could not be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own time Neither by them in their own Persons nor by their Deed of Gift nor by their Writings § II. 2. It hence follows that the only way they could use for conveying this Authority to others after their decease must be by appointing sufficient substitutes who might act for them after their departure § III. 3. The same reasons which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey this Power to any who did not live in their own Age do also prove it impossible for any of their Successors to do so § IV V. 4. This Negative Argument will only hold concerning the only substitutes of the Apostles and concerning them it will hold That they who have not received Power from them who are alone substituted by the Apostles to convey their Power to others cannot at all receive any Power from the Apostles § VI VII VIII IX 5. That this Negative Argument applied to any particular Age will hold concerning the only substitutes remaining in that particular Age. Bishops were the only substitutes of the Apostles then remaining when our Brethren began their innovations § X. § I 3. THIS Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived in this Age we live in from those men to whom it was at first committed that is from the Apostles without a continued succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them from those first times of the Apostles to ours at present § II FOR it is plain 1. That this Authority cannot be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own time There are but three ways conceivable how this might be possible that they themselves might convey Authority to others either by their Persons or by their Deed of Gift or by their Writings But by none of these means are they capable of receiving Authority from them who did not live in their time Not from them in their own Persons because they were dead before the Persons of whom we speak were born or were capable of receiving Authority from them For it is impossible to understand by the nature of any Humane contracts how a personal right can be devolved to another without a personal act or how any personal act can be between Persons who are not supposed coexistent at the same time Not by their Deed of Gift because this also could only convey their Power to Persons of their own Age. Especially considering that Power is that which is the original security of all other Gifts Indeed where a standing Power is supposed and a constant orderly Succession into that Power there a Gift may be made to future Persons which may both be determined by Persons so empowered and the Gift secured to Persons so determined by them But all are so sensible of the unpracticableness of a Gift to future Persons without a Power both to determine the Persons and secure the Gift to them as that it is ordinary in Wills to appoint Executors who may secure the performance where the standing Power cannot descend minutely to take care of the performance in particular cases And it were certainly in vain to make Testaments if none were empowered to determine the Controversies which rise in execution of them and if the publick Authority did not confirm the Act of the Testator in nominating an Executor and the Power of the Executor for performing the trust committed to him It is therefore absolutely necessary that a Power be first established by which the Will may be performed and a Succession in that Power ascertained for so long at least as any particular of the will remains unperformed before any one can in prudence think such a will performable And therefore the Power of the Apostles being the Supreme and only Power by which the Church as a Body Politick does subsist must be first secured and secured in a regular constant Succession so that none ought to be supposed in future Ages to receive any Power from them but they who receive it in that Succession by the hands of Persons empowered to give it them And because their Legacies are not confined to any certain Age therefore the Power of their Executors must not expire for ever and so much the rather because there is no superior Power to take care of the execution in case the Persons should fail who are immediately intrusted with the Execution Not by their Writings though they indeed continued extant after the decease of the Writers for what has been said in the future Chapter § III HENCE it follows 2. That if they would convey any Power to Persons not living in their own Age seeing they could not do it by themselves they must do it by appointing sufficient substitutes to act in their name after their decease that is they must give such Persons whom they would substitute the same Power themselves had received from Christ I mean as to these ordinary exercises of Power for which I am at present concerned and not only so but the same Power also which themselves had received of communicating this Power to others Where both of these were present the act of such substitutes was to be taken for the Act of the Apostles themselves and as validly obliging them as if it had been performed by themselves in their own Persons by all the Laws then received concerning Delegation and substitution And the want of either of them was sufficient by the same Laws to invalidate a conveyance from the Apostles by so imperfectly-Authorized substitutes And I have already shewn that the Laws then received were punctually observed by the Apostles in these their Legal conveyances I cannot foresee what other means our Adversaries can think of to avoid this consequence Chap. iii. §. 5 6 7 8. When they shall think of any it will then be time enough to consider it § IV AND 3. The very same reasons
which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey their Power to any who did not live in their own Age does also prove it impossible for any of their successors to do so They also cannot be supposed capable of acting in their own Persons when they cease to be in their own Persons and therefore can only be capable of acting by their substitutes whom they have intrusted with their Power and none can be taken for their substitutes but they who have been made so by their personal act when they were alive Which will perfectly reach the Negative for which I am concerned at present that they cannot be taken for the Apostles substitutes nor for the substitutes of any of their successors in later Ages who have not been substituted by them by a personal act and that what has not been done since by any substitute either of the Apostles or of any of their successors cannot be taken for the act of any of them and therefore cannot derive any Authority from them § V THESE things are as applicable to the Successors of the Apostles in every Age respectively as they are to the Apostles themselves As therefore in the Age succeeding the Apostles nothing could be done by the Apostles but what was done by some of them to whom the Apostles had committed their Power by a personal act in the Apostolical Age it self So neither in the third Age could any thing be taken for the Act of the Successors of the Apostles but what was done by Persons Authorized by their personal act in the preceding Age whilest those Successors were yet living And the same reasoning may be brought down through all the intermediate Ages to that wherein we live at present so that nothing ought to be taken for the Act of the Apostles in our present Age but what is done by them who have been lawfully substituted by them who have received their Power from their other lawful substitutes in the several Ages respectively by personal substitution of each Predecessor respectively whilest he was yet living and therefore no such Act can convey the Authority of the Apostles to any who is ambitious of pretending to it in our present Age. § VI 4. THEREFORE the force of this Negative Argument consisting in this that that cannot be the Apostles Act in a later Age which is not the Act of any of those who derive their substitution from them by personal Acts in the several Ages it will not hold but only in the only substitutes For supposing the Apostles substituted many in the first Age as certainly they did it will not follow that he who has not received his Authority from the Succession of Jerusalem for example has therefore not received it from the Apostles at all because he may have received it from the Succession of Antioch or any other Apostolical See But considering the whole complex of substitutes in every Age certainly the reason will hold that he who has derived his Authority from none of them must as certainly fail of deriving his Authority from the Apostles as if he had lived in the Age immediately succeeding the Apostles and yet had not received his Authority from any of them who had in the former Age received their Authority by a personal Act of the Apostles themselves The reasoning still holds the same how many soever the Ages of Succession are Neither can any Authority be given by the Apostles in the fifteenth Century which is not given by their substitutes then existing nor can they then be taken for their Successors who have not been substituted by several personal Acts of their immediate Predecessors through all the foregoing Period § VII AND this I therefore take for the imprudence of managing this Argument hitherto that recourse has been always had to the Primitive times as if the Succession had not been as much interrupted by a failure in later Ages as if it had failed then By which way of proceeding they both weakened the evidence of the Argument and withal made it less popular They weakened the Argument both as to its strength and as to its evidence As to its strength because what had indeed Succession then might fail of it in after Ages And therefore though our Adversaries Hypothesis had been true that single Presbyters had the Power of ordeining others given them when they were made Presbyters and therefore that the Persons ordeined by them then had been validly ordeined yet it is very possible that their Succession might fail afterwards and that later Presbyters might never have that Power given them which if they have not that is alone sufficient to disanul their present Ordinations And therefore the securest way of proving the validity of present Ordinations is to prove the uninterruptedness of their Succession down to our modern times not to rest contented with what was in the beginning but might have been since interrupted § VIII THEY weakened the evidence of the Argument by resolving it into Primitive Records in which way of proceeding it is very possible that many Records might have been lost nay it is most certain that many were so which though it be no Argument at all to prove that any thing was not from the beginning which we do not find mentioned in our remaining Records yet it is certainly a weakening the evidence of the Succession if the tryal be resolved into such Records as might have miscarried As certainly no secular Magistrate of a Corporation in this Age could make his title so clear if he were to prove it from the Records of all his Predecessors since the Charter was granted which may very well have miscarried in a much shorter Succession than that which is requisite for justifying our present Ordinations as if he be immediately allowed to resolve his title into the Charter as it has been found in unquestionable Practice and into his immediate Predecessors And this is the rather solid because it is a Principle agreed on for the security of all Governments to presume they came from the beginning unless there appear very probable evidence to the contrary though possibly their being from the beginning cannot be expresly proved from Primitive Records after the miscarriages of so many Generations And when God was pleased to settle a Government among men it is most likely that he would suit it as he did many other things of far less importance to Humane understanding and even to those of the vulgar who are as much concerned in Government as the Learned and that he would accordingly expect their Obedience according to the Rules of Humane equity And there is less reason to believe that he would oblige Ecclesiastical Government to depend on express Records than Secular not only because it is designed much more lasting than any Secular form of Government and Records are more apt to miscarry in a longer tract of time but also because the Persecutions to which they are exposed more than any other Societies
Mission and consequently the comfort of their Ordinances which must by the foregoing Principles depend on this validity of their Mission this will abundantly answer my design It will let them see that at least in the second Generation no comfort of Church-Ordinances can be had out of the Episcopal Communion Which will both let them see how much their Congregations must fail of being compleat Churches and consequently fail of the comforts and Priviledges of such Churches when they are not able to maintein a Succession and must withal let them of this Generation see at least so many of them as have not Ministers Episcopally ordeined their obligation in interest as well as Conscience to return to the Communion from which they have fallen as they desire all those comforts they might expect by being in a Church And even for them who at present enjoy such Ministers as have had Episcopal Ordination this may also let them see how much better it were to return to the Communion of the Church soon when they must be at length necessitated to return at the death of that particular Minister at least they cannot hope for another ordeined as he is to succeed him and withal how unlikely it is that their Churches should be the only Churches beloved by God when they are in imminent danger of that which God had threatned in the Revelations to those Churches which had provoked him of having their Candlestick removed from them of failing immediately in the next Succession § IV THAT therefore which I am to prove is that neither the first Dividers nor any among them now who have received the Order of Presbytery by Episcopal Authority had ever any such Power given them as might enable them to ordein others on account of their being made only Presbyters Whether they might have given them that Power I am not at present obliged to enquire It suffices at present that they have it not Their not having it is alone sufficient to disanul all they do on supposition of it Nor am I concerned whether they be obliged by God to give with the Order of Presbytery the Power of Ordination No doubt our Adversaries will say that they are so obliged But does it therefore follow that they have actually done it because they are obliged to do it May not the Episcopal Ordeiners fail of this as well as our Adversaries pretend them to have failed of many other Obligations If they do indeed fail and do not actually give them that power of ordeining others which our Adversaries suppose them obliged to give them all that can be said is that their Ordeiners are to blame for it and responsible to God for it not that the Persons ordeined by them have it but that they are wronged of it because it is not given to them And is not the very supposition of their being wronged of it of their not having it given them a certain Argument that actually they have it not unless possibly they suppose that either they may have it without being given or have it from God immediately though they cannot pretend to have it from Persons Authorized by him But both these pretences have been prevented by what has been already discoursed And their not having this Power on what account soever they be hindred from having it is alone sufficient to invalidate all they do that cannot be done without it § V IN order hereunto therefore I suppose 1. That they have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners This plainly appears from what has been already proved that their Ordeiners are they and they alone who have represented Gods Person in dealing with them and God has not appointed any other means of dealing immediately with them in these later Ages and therefore all that Power which can be thought to come to them originally from God must come immediately from their Ordeiners § VI 2. THEREFORE I suppose further that they have actually received from their Superiors nothing but what their Superiors did actually intend to give them One would think this should be very clear that they can receive nothing but what is given them and that nothing can be given but what is intended to be given This is indeed the great design of the equity of the Law to take care that contracts be observed according to the presumable intention of the Parties that made them and the dealing is then thought most fair and equal when all that is given that can be presumed to have been intended by a fair dealer and when nothing more is extorted by the other Party whose interest may make him challenge what was never designed for him nay cannot in any prudence be presumed to have been designed But for my present Cause I am not concerned whether this be true It suffices that nothing be given by them concerning which they may be presumed that they did intend not to give it And though it were possible that supposing the Ordeiners were obliged to give the Power of ordeining others when they made Presbyters the Law might presume that they did actually intend to do so though their secret intentions were to do otherwise because the Law is always charitable to judg the best where there is no evidence to the contrary and therefore might presume in such a case that every man intends really as he is obliged to intend yet still the reason why even in such a case this might be reasonable is not because they can be supposed to give what they never intend to give but because they may in this way of proceeding be presumed to intend what they do not really intend which is still very reconcilable with what I say that their gift is to be measured by their presumed intention And therefore to prevent all possible exceptions of this kind I do intend to ground my Argument not on the secret but the presumed intention of these Ordeiners I am speaking of and shall accordingly shew that the Bishops who ordeined these revolting Presbyters ought to be presumed to have intended not to give them a Power of ordeining others § VII TO this purpose I suppose 3. That as indeed the Law is always charitable to presume that every man intends as it becomes him to intend so it is withal prudent to presume his actual intention not from what others do think will become him no nor from what will really become him in the judgment of God himself who is infallible but from what the Person may be presumed likely to judg to become him according to the general sense of men in his circumstances And therefore our Brethren must not judg of the intention of the Bishop by the real will of God much less by their own Notions concerning Gods will who cannot pretend to be more infallible than the Bishop himself but by the judgment of the Bishop himself that he must be presumed to intend what according to the Principles
this Opinion could not think themselves obliged to give this Power to simple Presbyters As to the Canonical exercise of their Power Presbyters still depended on their Bishops even in things not exceeding their Power as Presbyters But when a simple Presbyter was licensed to Preach or hear Confessions this was not properly called an extension of his Character By which it seems most likely that by this extension of the Character they did not only mean a Canonical Liberty to exercise more Acts of the same Power which they supposed them to have received before but an addition of a new branch of Power which because Presbyters want if they presume to exercise it their doing so must prove not only Vncanonical but invalid Though they believed the substance of the Power to have been the same yet certainly the least that could have been meant by the difference of Degree between Bishops and Presbyters must have been that Bishops had that same Power independently which the Presbyters had dependently on the Bishops as to the exercise of it Undoubtedly this they did grant who held this Opinion of St. Hierome in the greatest rigor in those Ages I am speaking of if they did not grant something more And yet this is sufficient for my present design both to shew why these very Persons might not have thought it fit to give this power of Ordination to simple Presbyters and why it is very rational for us also to presume that they did not actually give it them § IX FOR by the fundamental Principles of all Societies the Power of giving Power to others is still reserved as a Prerogative of him who has that same Power independently And the reason of it is very plain as to both parts as to him that has the Power dependently and as to him who has it independently He who has the Power of administring the Sacraments yet so as to depend on the Authority of another in the exercising of that Power cannot therefore with any Justice make a valid conveyance of that Power to another because he cannot himself be taken for an absolute Master of that Power Though the Power it self be given irrevocably yet while it is given with the condition of dependence is cannot be alienable by the Person to whom it is given without the givers consent because the right of alienation supposes a property of our own and dependence implies a reservation of right to him on whom we do depend which right as it is absolutely necessary to an intire alienation so it cannot with any Justice or validity be disposed of without the consent of him whose property it is Besides that giving of Power does plainly belong to the exercise of Power and to a higher degree of exercise of it than that of the exercise of the Power so given as it implies a greater Power to give a Power which includes a capacity of all the Acts belonging to it than only to give a liberty to exercise a particular Act. And therefore he who has not a just title to give way to the exercise of the Power so given can be much less supposed to have one to that higher exercise of Power by which the Power it self is disposed of It is also clear as to him that has the Power independently It is necessary for Government that all others do depend on those who are themselves supposed independent But this cannot be understood unless the independent Power alone be allowed the Power of admitting to Office whom he pleases If others may be allowed to give their Power they will soon make themselves independent if they were not so at first by making a party and perpetuating it But because this whole Power of giving Power in the Persons I am speaking of is so eternally irreconcilable with the safety of Societies therefore it is fit it should never be given them and therefore in the way of presumption for which I am at present concerned it is to be presumed that it never was intended for them § X BUT if our Brethren would be pleased to reflect on the Principles on which these Persons proceeded in making one Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery they would find that they did not in the least oblige them to believe that this Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters The plain reason was that they made their distinction of Orders only in relation to the Sacrament of the Eucharist And because simple Priests had the full Power of this Sacrament of consecrating as well as of administring it so that there was nothing higher requisite for the completion of this solemnity reserved to the Bishop nor capable of being reserved to him therefore there was on this account no room left for any Order above Priesthood And because this Power of transubstantiating the Eucharistical Elements was then looked on as the highest instance of Power that could be communicated to Mortals because this was thought sufficient to exempt from all Subjection to temporal Princes nay to place the Spiritual Power above the Princes and yet in this instance of Power which had been so extremely extolled in the Disputes of those Ages between the Popes and Princes the Bishops could pretend to do no more than what was performable by every ordinary Priest therefore it can be no wonder if in this regard many of them could not allow any Order superior to that of simple Priesthood He that is but a little conversant in the writings of that Age will find that as the Doctrine of Transubstantiation was very eagerly mainteined as the great recommendation of the Sacred Power in those Disputes which were then raised concerning it so it is particularly urged for the honour of Presbytery as often as they were put upon magnifying their Office And this I therefore take in earnest to have been the true reason that inclined those of the Writers of that Age that followed this Opinion rather than the pretended instances of Scripture or even the Authority of St. Hierome himself For these were Principles for which as they were more firmly interested so I believe they were also much more heartily believed in that Age than any on◠particular controverted sense of Scripture recommended on the Authority of one particular Father And therefore whatever Superiority of Bishops over Priests was reconcilable with this allowance of a Power of consecrating the Eucharist to simple Priests all this might have been acknowledged by these very Persons notwithstanding their making them the same Order And considering that this Power of Ordination was thus reconcilable this Opinion could not hinder those Persons from appropriating it to the Bishops § XI FOR notwithstanding this Power of the Priesthood over the Corpus Christi verum was thought common to them with the Bishops yet the Power over the Corpus Christi Mysticum this was the language of those Ages was then acknowledged for the peculiar right of the Bishops And what can our Adversaries think themselves gainers
Bishops how great Assertors soever of the identity of their Order with that of Presbyters ever did renounce or could renounce without making their Government unpracticable § XI Though the Bishops had received their Power from their Election by men yet that would not suffice to make valid any Acts of the same men without their consent after their Election § XII XIII This right of Presidency might hold though the whole right of their Power had been purely Humane § XIV But supposing that right Divine all that men can do can be only to determine the Person not to confine the Power The reasoning here used will proceed though Bishops had been made by Presbyters alone without the concurrence and Consecration of other Bishops § XV. The Primitive Bishops seem indeed to have been made so by Presbyters without Bishops § XVI BUT though we should suppose those Persons then to have been altogether of the same mind which they conceive those to have been of who lived in the Apostles times though we suppose not only that they thought it fit that the whole power of the Bishop should be given to Presbyters but that they had actually given it them suppose we that the Bishop had no more Authority reserved to him than only to preside in their Assemblies that is to call them and to fit in the first place of them when they were convened that is supposing that the Bishops Authority were no more than what was consistent with the Aristocratical form of Government which they conceive to have been observed in the Primitive times though this supposition be notoriously false concerning the Ages I am speaking of yet I do not see how even this way our Brethren can defend the validity of their Ordinations by single Presbyters especially as it is practised among them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no power can be given I do not mean only that it cannot be given Canonically but that it cannot be given validly but to Persons who are at least in conjunction with those from whom they receive their power then at least when they actually receive it Which will consequently null all the Ordinations which have been made in the state of separation and will therefore make it impossible for any Schism which is made by single Presbyters in the way that has been observed by our Adversaries to maintein it self with any pretence of Authority beyond one generation And this must sure be very acceptable to those generous Spirits who are more solicitous for Catholick Vnity than for the party in which they were born § II AND that this is so I shall endeavour to prove in two regards in regard of the power that must be allowed to the Bishop even as the President of these Assemblies and in regard of that which must be allowed to other Presbyters as fellow-members of the same Assemblies 1. In regard of the power of the Bishop as President of those Assemblies For by the Fundamental Principles even of Aristocratical Government it is certain 1. That no power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated that is in our case of the whole Presbytery It is against the interest of all Societies and the principles of all Government that single Members even of those who have otherwise power in conjunction with others to dispose of the Government of a Society should be allowed the power of disposing of it in their single capacities But it is peculiarly against the right of a Polyarchical Government because no particular Member has the right of the whole Society and therefore cannot dispose of the Government of it which whether it be supreme or subordinate must imply either a power over the whole Society or a power necessarily derived from that which is so Even subordinate Authority must be derived from the supreme that there may be such an essential dependence upon it as is necessary for the safety of all Societies This will therefore make it a Nullity in the thing if single Members do presume to dispose of that which is not their own right alone but the right of the whole Body § III AND 2. As by the nature of this Government the right of it must be supposed to be in the whole Body so neither can any act be presumed to be the act of the whole Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies Though every particular Member for himself should signifie his own consent yet it is not taken for the act of the Society till it be also signified in an Assembly and it is taken for the act of the whole Society if it pass them in their Assembly though without the consent of every particular Person so it have the prevailing vote nay though that prevailing vote be not the greater part of the Society so it be only of the greater part of those which are present in such Assemblies For the reason of this I say no more at present but that it is found necessary for all Multitudes to agree on these Rules for settling Assemblies and for giving this power to what is done in such Assemblies to conclude the whole Societies and to the prevailing vote of those Assemblies to conclude the whole Assemblies before they can pass out of the state of a Multitude into that of a Society that is before they can have any Government that can solidly unite them at least before they can have any Government that can be practicable The same reasons which make this fit to be agreed on in any one Society are common to all Societies as Societies and therefore must be allowed the same force in those that are Ecclesiastical as in those that are Civil as they are capable of being administred in this Life And therefore God himself cannot be supposed to have made a Government even of his own institution practicable till he have settled these Rules of administring it And when they are once settled however they come to be so whether by Gods own appointment or by the consent of the People it will then be very just as well as fit to conclude that what is done on pretence of the right of the Society out of such an Assembly cannot validly confer any right of the Society because on the Principles of the agreement on these Assemblies they are not to be reputed as acts of the Society And certainly as nothing but the Society it self can in Justice make a valid conveyance of its own right so it is not conceivable how the Society it self can do it by any thing but its own act Besides the very reason of agreeing on these Assemblies as the most convenient means for administring the power of the Society seems to be purposely to preclude all surreptitious acts that might be pretended in the name of the Society if designing men might be allowed in their pretences concerning what might be transacted privately And therefore the main
mentioned For grant this power of perpetual presiding to the Bishops and it will then follow that the right of convening Ecclesiastical Assemblies will belong to them Therefore those Assemblies which meet without their Calling as all those must do which meet out of their Communion can be no lawful Assemblies But the acts of unlawful Assemblies though otherwise consisting of such Persons as had a real power in lawful ones are Nullities can oblige the Society to nothing much less can they dispose of a thing of so great moment to them as their power They are not only Nullities but offences of that nature as that they are so far from obliging the Societies in any equity to confirm them as that they do oblige them by the highest common interest to punish them Which plainly shews that though Presbyters had been allowed a power of Ordination yet they could not validly exercise it out of the Episcopal Communion and therefore that whatever may be said to that Question yet that cannot make it questionable whether the Orders of our present Adversaries be valid § XI THIS right of presiding in the Assemblies was a thing which the highest Asserters of the Identity of Order between Bishops and Presbyters in the modern Ages I am speaking of did undoubtedly never think the Bishops obliged to renounce Nor could any Bishop how heartily soever he believed that opinion be presumed to give the Presbyters ordeined by him a power of meeting without his leave when themselves pleased And yet undoubtedly the Bishops were actually possessed of that power by a peaceable prescription of many Centuries and by the consent of the Presbyters themselves who lived in them so that the Presbyters then ordeined could lay no claim to it without an express gift from the Bishops who ordeined them because they never had that power nor were there any remaining then who could give it them besides the Bishops And indeed the Bishops could not renounce this power without dissolving the Society by making the exercise of Government unpracticable or without changing the whole frame of Government For supposing they had renounâ—ed this right who must have had it If none had it how could the Society be secured that Assemblies should meet if none had power to call them if non had power to oblige particular Members to be present at them when called If any particular Presbyter had been intrusted with it that had only been an alteration of the Person not of the right of the Office The new intrusted Presbyter would thereby become the Bishop by what name soever they would be pleased to call him and all the change that ordinary Presbyters would find by such an act would be only of their Master not of their subjection If it had been given away indefinitely no particular Presbyter could lay a better claim to it than all his Brethren and by all it is not practicable till they be considered as convened in an Assembly If it had therefore been given to the whole Assembly either they must thenceforth have stated times allotted them for meeting or every meeting must be allowed to adjourn themselves and to appoint the time and place for meeting again If at any time no meeting were ascertained the Government would be dissolved This is indeed the way practised in Peliarchical Governments but such a resignation of the Bishop as this must therefore have altered the very frame of the Government And where can our Adversaries give any precedent either in Catholick Tradition or even in the times of the Scripture it self wherein any such thing was practised by Presbyteries Where was it ever heard that they called or adjourned themselves without the Authority of the President of their Assemblies by what name soever our Brethren will be pleased to call them § XII NOR am I concerned by my present interest how the Bishops came by their power of presiding whether by the Election of their Clergy or People or whether by a new consecration by Bishops only Let the guesses of St. Hierome the counterfeit Ambrose and Eutychius be as true as our Adversaries can wish them Let it be so that the Bishops received no new Consecration of their own Order that no men but the Presbyters were concerned in giving their power to them Our Adversaries usually think they have performed a great matter when they have produced these conjectures of these Authors And yet when they have made all they can of them they are no better than conjectures These Authors lived too far from the times they speak of to assure us of any thing Historically Nor do they pretend to any Histories we know not of that might put us in any hope that they speak what they say on better grounds than eonjecture Yet these are the only grounds of all that our Adversaries say positively in this matter But I say granting that these conjectures were true and that not only the ancient Bishops but the Bishops of the Ages we are speaking of had no new consecration nor consequently had any new power from what they were capable of receiving by the Canonical Election of their Clergy and granting therefore that all the further power they pretend to by their Consecration is no just accession of power and therefore none at all I do not see how even by this power which they may receive by their Election our Adversaries can defend the validity of their present Ordinations For what if the Bishop had received his power from the Presbyters Does it therefore follow that the Presbyteries must not depend on him when he has received it Does it follow that they must still have power as freely as formerly to assemble themselves without his leave and either to depose him or to set up another in his stead or at least to erect themselves an independent Body on any Superior Does it follow that such practices of theirs would be valid if they should attempt them § XIII NAY the very contrary has been taken hitherto for the only solid security of peace in all prudent humane establishments In all elective Kingdoms the Interreges have a power during the vacancy to dispose of the affairs of the Kingdom till a new King be elected But they as well as other Subjects would be guilty of Treason if they should attempt the same things afterwards Their Assemblies would be as illegal and their proceedings in them of as little validity as those of other Subjects So in St. Hieromes instance Ep. ad Euagr. the Army chose the Emperor and when he was so chosen he was not invested in his power by any Authority superior to that of the Army Yet that power of the Army expired as soon as he was once peaceably settled in the power received from them They could not then meet as they had done formerly If they did such meetings were thenceforwards illegal and their proceedings null Much less could they justifie a revolt from him or validly defend their
interessed in common as that the very same performance which is eminently serviceable to one may for that very cause be as eminently disserviceable to the other as when they are in a state of hostility However it is certain that as their interests are very different so the means of serving those interests are very different also and therefore that there is no real consequence that he who has indeed obliged one Society must in doing so oblige all others also § VI BUT the benefits of the Sacraments are such as that he who has them in one Church cannot by him who supposes him to have them there be at the same time supposed to want them in another Regeneration and pardon of sins and a Mystical Vnion with Christ are the designed effects of the Sacraments And it is impossible that he who has these in any one Church can be presumed to want them in another by them who presume he already has them And as no Church can think it in her power to exclude from her Communion those very Persons whom she judges regenerated and pardoned and united to Christ so if she be convinced that these benefits are validly conferred by a Presbyter in another Church she must in reason be obliged to treat them as such in her own Now whether they be validly conferred or not that she is to try by his Ministry If his Ministry be a valid Ministry his Sacraments must be valid Sacraments and actually confer the benefits designed by them to Persons not unqualified to receive them And whether his Ministry be valid or no that is whether he be indeed a Legal Representative of God so as to oblige him to ratifie what is done by himself in his name this being an act of Authority and of Authority visibly administred by men however proceeding originally from God it must be judged the same way as is usually made use of in judging concerning acts of Humane Authority that is by considering the power by which he has received it And because by communicating with the Church of which such a Presbyter is a Member and from whence himself pretends to have received his Authority she plainly acknowledges that that Church has really a power to give him that Authority he pretends to therefore the only way to satisfie her self in this matter is to examine the truth of his pretences whether he has indeed received that Authority he pretends to from those Persons from whom he pretends to have received it Which way of tryal does plainly resolve her judgment in this matter into her correspondency with his Church By that she judges whether his Authority be good and whether he have actually received it § VII 2. THEREFORE Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in which he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them For their duty of correspondence being primarily with Churches and only secondarily with particular Persons as they relate to particular Churches which is particularly true in acts of Authority which cannot be supposed in any particular Person but by derivation from some Church or which is to the same purpose from some Ecclesiastical Person whose act is to be taken for the act of the Church it must follow that the tryal of the pretences of any particular Person to Authority must be by examining his reception of it from the Church And therefore if it cannot appear that he has received any such Authority as he pretends to from that Church wherein he pretends to have received it he is to be presumed not to have it at all and therefore all that he presumes to do on supposition of it must be null and invalid § VIII 3. THE Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders For no other Church can be supposed proper to try him by because the Authority of no other Church can be presumed good antecedently to his being so All the Authority nay the very being of a Church set up by a particular Presbyter must it self depend on the Authority of the Person by whom it is set up If he be no Presbyter such a Congregation cannot be a Church in the sence we mean the word at present and therefore cannot be capable of any Ecclesiastical Authority Whence it will follow that he cannot by any act of such a Church derive Authority if he wanted it before because they can have no Authority but what he brought over to them If he brought none they have none to give him If they had any yet not such as were proper for this purpose both because it is hardly possible that it can be more notorious than that which was at least in time antecedent to it and because at least it cannot be such a Church as other Churches have held correspondence with antecedently to their correspondence with his particular Person and therefore whose Authority might have been presumed to have been granted by them on account of their correspondence with them And there will appear the less reason either that this way of tryal should be right or should be admitted by them because it is against the interests of all Government whatsoever and will justifie the practices of any seditious Person who can be so successful in his seditious practices as to gain himself the reputation of being the Head of a seditious party To be sure the party headed by him will give him all the Authority they are capable of giving him It is their interest to do so at least in the beginnings of disturbances and as it will oblige him to their interests so it will give him greater advantages for promoting those interests effectually And then what Government can think it self secure if it were so easie to justifie seditious practices How can we think that Governments should ever be favourable to Principles so pernicious to the rights of Government in general § IX NOR are these things only true concerning Churches erected by single Presbyters but concerning such also as had whole Presbyteries made up of multitudes of single Presbyters who had been over-voted in their several Presbyteries respectively Especially if they presumed to exercise their Government in the Jurisdiction of another This would also be a precedent as favourable to sedition and as destructive to Government as the other If fugitive over-voted Magistrates of several places may invade the Territories of a Third and there erect themselves into an absolute Senate independent on the Government of the place what security could there be for any Government For can we think that those same Persons who
the Scripture sense any otherwise than as they thought the Presbyters in the modern sense justified by the Scripture If this was the reason as in all likelihood it must according to the sense of those times then certainly their prime design was only to give that power which was then granted to Presbyters which will not include the power of ordeining others as I have already shewn Besides it cannot be presumed that their design was to make Presbyters in the Scripture sense any farther than as they thought Scripture precedent obliging to their own times If they thought it lawful for them to alienate the right which originally belonged to them if at least they thought such an Alienation valid when done however unlawful to be done why should they rather think of retrieving the Scripture-practice in this particular than in those of the Deaconesses and the feasts of Love c. to which no parties think themselves obliged at present § XXI I CANNOT but think that this was really St. Hieromes sense of this matter Ad Euagr. who never thought himself obliged by his singular opinion concerning the Primitive form of Ecclesiastical Government to make any disturbance in the present settlement And the reason he gives for the change that it was for the avoiding Schism was a commendable reason and as much concerning his own and all future times as it did those wherein this change was first supposed to have been made Schism is still as dangerous to the Church and Episcopacy is still as prudent an expedient for preventing the occasion of Schism arising from parity now and for ever as it was then And the decree of the whole World which he mentions as the Authority by which this change was made if it do not include the Apostles or some such extraordinary Officers who in those times had alone the power of making such a Decree as he there speaks of which might oblige the whole World and in whose time the expressions he makes use of for expressing this Schism that one said he was of Paul another of Cephas another of Apollos were first and most literally fulfilled and it is unlikely that they would defer the remedy so long after the occasion as our Adversaries suppose besides that the mistake of mens thinking that the Disciples baptized by them were their own is not likely to have continued so long and to have prevailed so universally as to occasion a general Decree against it after the death of all the Apostles when St. Paul himself had so expresly condemned it so long before If I say the whole World concerned in this business did not include the Apostles and it is most certain that it cannot exclude them yet certainly it must have included all those extraordinary persons of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who besides their intimate acquaintance with the Apostles were themselves indued with great and Apostolical gifts and as they cannot be presumed ignorant of the Apostles mind in a matter of fact so notorious as this was of Government so they cannot be presumed unfaithful to their trust in a matter of this consequence as to make a Decree directly contrary to an establishment of the Apostles designed by them to be unalterable and this Decree an universal one without contradiction of any one of these Apostolical Persons § XXII WHATEVER our Brethren may think of these things now yet certainly St. Hierome could not on these terms think this change invalid Nor consequently could any of them think so who were in this matter guided by St. Hierome And if so we have no reason to presume that they must have intended to restore the antiquated Scripture-right of Presbyters which if it prove true must overthrow all our Adversaries Arguments for proving that Ordination was a right of Scripture-Presbyters in order to the proving the like right in Presbyters now Though it was their right then yet if it be alienable it may cease to be their right now If it were unalienable from those who once had it yet without defending the validity of any alienation they may want it now not because they alienated it but because they never had it However though it had been their design to give our present Presbyters all that right which belonged to Presbyters in the Apostles times yet certainly they who made these Presbyters are the most competent Judges of their own intentions if we will deal fairly not captiously And therefore even in this case our Adversaries should not immediately conclude that to be the right of modern Presbyters because themselves think that Presbyters in the Apostles time had it unless they could prove our modern Ordeiners to have been of their mind in this particular It suffices at present that I have shewn that it is not from the Scriptures as a Charter but from their Ordeiners as Persons Authorized by that Charter and as Authentick Expositors of it if not as to truth yet at least as to practice that they receive their Orders and therefore that the power actually received by them must not be measured by the true sence of the Scriptures but from that wherein their Ordeiners understood them But I have already proved that they who intended to make them Presbyters in the Scripture-sence did not could not suppose that the power of Ordination was the right of Scripture-Presbyters § XXIII BUT they may object further that the rights united by God are inseparable by any Humane Authority and that the power of Ordination is by God united to the other rights of Scripture Presbyters so that it was impossible to give them any one right without giving them all or to retein one without reteining all and therefore that if our present Presbyters have the power of administring the Sacraments they must not be denied the power of Ordination If our Adversaries mean that those Presbyters who had both those powers united in them by God could not be deprived of the one power without the other nor indeed of any by any Humane Authority this if it should prove true yet is a case wherein our present Ordinations are not concerned which were not received in those times wherein our Adversaries pretend to prove that these two powers were so inseparably united If further they say that de jure they ought not to be separated as they will find the bare Argument from Scripture-precedent very unconcluding to this purpose they neither can prove that ever Scripture-Presbyters did ordein in separation from a President much less that smaller over-voted parts of any particular Presbyteries or any Presbyteries made up of fugitives from many did so nor if they could can they prove the precedent obliging now without some more inforcing considerations from the nature of the thing so they will not find it easie to produce better And it is at present sufficient for my purpose that they may be separated de facto though they who separate them be to blame for doing so § XXIV NOR
certain that both are not than this that where it is on no account customary to include one power in the gift of the other as it is not customary to include a superior power in giving an inferior there it is to be presumed that is was not intended to be given and therefore that the gift of the other power must be invalid if one cannot be validly given alone But where it is reasonable or usual to include the one in the other there it is reasonable to presume that both were intended to be given because the Person cannot in such a case be supposed willing to null his own gift which on this supposition he must do if he do not give both together because he must inevitably either give all or nothing CHAP. XXVI The right of particular Episcopal Jurisdictions THE CONTENTS 2. The Episcopal Communion to which every one is obliged to joyn himself as he would secure the ordinary means of his own particular salvation is the Episcopal Communion of the place wherein he lives whilest he lives in it § I. This proved against the several sorts of the Non-Conformists according to their several principles § II. 1. As to the Presbyterians and those who acknowledg an obligation of Government antecedently to the consent of particular Subjects And that by these degrees 1. That by the obligation of Government in general all those particulars must be obliging without it cannot be practicable § III. 2. Many of the Presbyterians themselves do acknowledg the determination of particular circumstances and the application of General Rules to particular Cases to belong to the Office of Ecclesiastical Governours § IV. 3. It is absolutely necessary for the practicableness of Government in general that every Subject know his Governour and him particularly to whom he in particular owes Obedience § V. 4. The means whereby every particular Person may be convinced to whom it is that he in particular owes Subjection must be such as may be presumed notorious to the whole Community and such whereof others may judg as well as the Person particularly concerned and by which they may judg as well concerning his Duty as their own § VI. 5. The Authority of these means must be from God § VII VIII Two Consequences inferred from hence 1. Positive That they must be under a Divine Obligation to own the Authority of these Jurisdictions whilest they live within them § IX 2. Negative that from this Divine Authority of Jurisdictions they must find themselves obliged to forbear all opposite Communions or Assemblies within those Jurisdictions § X XI XII Application made particularly to the Presbyterians § XIII 2. As to the Independents who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedently to the voluntary Obligations of particular Persons § XIV XV. That there is really a power of Government in the Church § XVI That this power is not derived from the Multitude § XVII XVIII § I 2. THE Episcopal Communion to which every particular Person is obliged to join himself as he would secure the ordinary means of his own particular Salvation is the Episcopal Communion of the place wherein he lives whilest he lives in it I do not say that the ordinary means of Salvation are to be had no where but in any one particular Diocess I do not say but that those same ordinary Administrations of Sacraments which are available to the Salvation of those who belong to other Dioceses and do there partake of them might also be available to the Salvation of any of another Diocess if he were out of his own Jurisdiction which he must needs be if he communicate in another Diocess Nor further do I say that any one is so obliged by his Baptismal vow in any one Diocess to continue in that Diocess for his whole Life as that it would be a violation of his Baptismal obligation for him to remove elsewhere especially if he removed according to the custom of the Primitive times with the Communicatory and Dimissory Letters of the Ordinary of his own original Diocess When our Adversaries prove any of these things let them not think that they disprove any thing which I have undertaken to defend nor that my cause does oblige me to defend All that I design at present and which I am sorry that it will in the consequence of it concern our Adversaries so severely is to prove the obligation that lies on every Member of a particular Diocess to submit to all the unsinful impositions of the Diocess whilst he lives in it For which it is sufficient that that particular Communion be as necessary to him in opposition to all other Communions which may be had within that same Jurisdiction without the consent of those to whose Jurisdiction it belongs as it is necessary that he communicate at all For as I have shewn that communicating in general will oblige the Communicant to a dependence on those without whose consent such Communion cannot be had and a dependence so great as may oblige him rather to submit to any impositions short of sin in submitting to them than to lose the external participation of the Sacraments so by the same proportion of reason if no other Communion can safely be embraced but that which depends on the Governours of that Jurisdiction to which the person I speak of is supposed to belong this will oblige him to as great a dependence on that particular Jurisdiction so long as he belongs to it § II AND that I may make my Discourse on this Subject useful to all sorts of Non-Conformists I conceive it necessary to reason with them differently according to the difference of Principles admitted by them that so none of them may want that evidence which may be necessary for their conviction As for those who do not admit of rational consequences from truths acknowledged by themselves it is vain to reason with them at all For all Discourse is nothing else but an inferring of something which is not granted from something which is so But this can never oblige any such Person to believe such Inferences true if he doubt whether real consequences from his own Assertions might not be false though his Assertions themselves were very true There is therefore no dealing with such Persons by reason but they must inevitably be left to their own Enthusiasm The rest therefore who admit of rational consequences I shall consider in two ranks 1. Of those who admit of an Authority obliging antecedently to the acts of particular Persons under which I think I might rank the Presbyterians generally if they were true to their own Principles that is if in arguing against the Church they would be wary of any other Principles but such as themselves admit in their disputes against the Independents and 2. Of those who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedent to the voluntary Obligations of particular Persons And of this sort are the Independents and others downwards These men when they have 1. denied the
obligingness of Ecclesiastical Authority antecedently to compacts of the Subjects And when 2. they have withal denied also the obligingness of the compacts of Predecessors to oblige Successors in this matter And when they have 3. denied the obligation of their Baptismal Covenant in reference to any duty owing by them to any particular Church even to that particular one in which they have received their Baptism even so long as they continue in it When 4. they make the act whereby they confer power to their Pastors not privative but accumulative so that they are still supposed to reserve to themselves the same liberty after they have empowered their Pastors which they enjoyed before I say when we consider them as proceeding on these Principles it cannot be admired that they destroy all Jurisdiction especially in regard of place For how is it possible that such Persons should think themselves obliged to submit to any particular Jurisdiction on account of their living within a particular district of place when they neither think themselves obliged to own any Lord of any place antecedently to the compacts of the Inhabitants nor think themselves obliged by any compacts of their Predecessors of former generations which might have given him the Dominion of the place so far as it was in the power of the Inhabitants to give it him How can they think themselves obliged by the place they live in who do not think themselves bound by any thing but their own act nor by that it self any longer or any farther than themselves please But it seems much stranger how they should do it who do not think particular Persons obnoxious to Discipline antecedently to any consent of their own distinct from that whereby they undertook their Baptism and their Christianity § III 1. THEREFORE as to the Presbyterians and those others who acknowledg an obligation of Government antecedently to the consent of particular Subjects that which can alone be requisite in dealing with such Persons is to let them see that from this antecedent obligation to Government in general it follows that they must be subject to the particular Jurisdictions To which purpose it is to be observed 1. That by the obligation of Government in general all those particulars must be obliging without which it cannot be practicable For it is not becoming the Divine Wisdom that we should suppose that he should constitute a Government that should not be practicable He cannot be supposed to design a Government but for the actual practice of it because this is indeed the only use of it and therefore the only reason that might make it capable of being prudently designed But none can design a Government for practice which he knows to be unpracticable And therefore if he do design it it must not be supposed to have been known by him to be unpracticable but to prove so for some reason that was not foreseen by him when he designed it But this cannot be thought true concerning God Whence it must plainly follow that if any thing else should prove necessary for the practicableness of the Government designed by him besides what was provided for by express constitutions yet we have reason to believe that it was foreseen and therefore also very prudent reason to presume that it was intended by him when he seems to have been so well satisfied with that which he was so certain would prove true in the event as that he did not judg it necessary to make any other provision concerning it § IV AND 2. The Presbyterians themselves at least so many of them in our present Age who have lived to see those consequences actually follow which their Predecessors did not foresee that they would follow these I say do not deny but that the application of general Rules to particulars and the determination of those circumstances without which the general Rules would not be applicable to particular Cases do properly belong to the Office of Ecclesiastical Governours And whether they granted it or not yet they who will stand to the tryal of reason or rational consequences must needs grant the reason now proposed that all which was necessary for the practicableness of the Government designed by God must needs have been foreseen and therefore designed by him in order to the making the Government designed by him practicable And therefore all that can be necessary to be proved further against these Persons can only be that the acknowledgment of these Jurisdictions is absolutely necessary for the practicableness of this Government in general § V 3. THEREFORE it is absolutely necessary for the practicableness of Government in general that every Subject know his Governour and him particularly to whom he in particular owes obedience If he only know in general who are Governours indefinitely and withal know that he is not obliged to pay any duty but only to those to whom he in particular owes subjection it plainly follows that as yet he may deny his duty to all particular Governours because he does not owe them it barely as Governours but particularly as his So that as yet no Government can be practised For Government and Subjection do necessarily answer each other and Government cannot be practised by the Governours without an acknowledgment of Subjection by the Subjects An actual exercise of power will be unsufficient to secure a practice of obedience without a right to such a coercive power Nor can the right actually oblige the Subjects to submit unless it be acknowledged by them If at least it be not acknowledged for right by the greater part and unless they confess themselves obliged in Conscience to acknowledg it it cannot prove actually coercive § VI 4. THE means whereby every particular Person may be convinced to whom it is that he in particular owes subjection must be such as may be presumed notorious to the whole Community and therefore must not be of private cognizance but such whereof others may judg as well as the person particularly concerned and by which they may judg as well concerning his Duty as their own This is necessary that every Member of the Community ignorant as well as skilful may know his own duty and be left inexcusable if he neglect it which will require great plainness and easiness in the means that they may be suitable to the meanest capacities of those who are concerned to be directed by them as that plainness and easiness must in the event make them notorious to all But much rather it is necessary in a Community where Governours and all who are concerned for the maintenance of Government are to judg of the actions of Subjects and to reward or punish them as they shall judg them dutiful or refractory whatever the concerned Subjects themselves shall profess or pretend to judg to the contrary If this liberty of judging and of imposing their judgment in practice be not allowed to Governours it will be impossible for them to answer the designs of Government
And it cannot be reasonable for them to judg others to be undutiful unless they suppose their reasons such as may not only perswade themselves but may also prevail on all others who use that industry and ingenuity which the moment of the thing would require from them But the evidence must be much greater which may encourage men to judg of the industry or ingenuity of those who dissent from themselves than what may suffice for their own satisfaction Probable appearances of things to themselves may be very prudent reasons to incline men rather to one side of a disputable question But that cannot make it reasonable for them to believe that others who are more judicious and sagacious than themselves are all obliged to be of their mind and must either be wanting in their industry or ingenuity if they be not so Yet some cases there are which are so very evident as that men may judg concerning them for others how judicious soever as well as for themselves But then the evidence must be so great as may exceed all that whereby we may judg concerning the industry or ingenuity of others For in this case only it is reasonable to suspect the disingenuity or negligence of others rather than their want of conviction in case they dissent from us And therefore thus great the evidence must be by which Governours must judg concerning the punishableness of Dissenters But the evidence by which they must judg of the conviction their Subjects may have of the right of such Governours to govern them must yet be presumed by so much greater than the evidence of their particular Decrees by how much the evidence of Principles ought to be greater than that of the inferences deduced from those Principles For the knowledg of the Persons who are to govern us is indeed the first Principle of the practicableness of any visible Government § VII HENCE it follows 5. That those notorious and agreed means by which Subjects may be enabled to judg to whose Government they do particularly belong must be from God And if it be from him it is no matter whether it be from him immediately or whether it be derived from him by the Ministry of men empowered by him and who are empowered by virtue of their general Authority received from him to make provision even for this particular case It suffices that God will account resistance to Superiors whose right is discoverable by such notorious Rules as a resistance to Governours established by himself and I believe this is all of which our dissenting Brethren themselves will desire to be satisfied And that this is so will easily appear from the Principles already premised For if all must be presumed to come from God which is necessary for the practicableness of the Government established by him and the knowledg of their particular Governours be necessary for the practice of the duty of particular Subjects and no other means be proper for this knowledg of their Governours but such as are agreed and notorious it must then follow that God must have provided some such means And then considering that this distinction of Jurisdictions is such a means for Subjects to distinguish to whose Government they belong seeing that this was a means agreed on by all and notoriously in use long before the rise of them who first began to question Jurisdictions it cannot be denied to be very becoming the care of God that this should be settled by him But on the other side considering also that the means assigned by our Adversaries different from this of Jurisdiction are neither notorious nor agreed on by any but themselves or those who have innovated with them who cannot in any equity be allowed to be competent Judges in a matter of this nature wherein the whole Community is concerned even those also who dissent from them who have the advantage of Number as well as of Prescription against them I say these things being considered these cannot be taken for means of Gods appointment And therefore the settlement of Jurisdictions is not only a proper means but the only means by which all must be concluded in this matter And therefore they must either be acknowledged obligatory by divine right or God cannot be supposed to have made those provisions which are absolutely necessary for making the Government established by him practicable This must follow from their finding it already settâ—ed to their hands when they first began their Innovations that by whomsoever these Jurisdictions were first introduced yet they were not introduced without the Divine approbation Which is enough to oblige all them who find it grounded on such a right to submit to it But according to the Principles of those of our Adversaries who allow the Church a power to determine particular circumstances not expresly determined in the Scriptures but yet necessary for the practice of those general rules which are already prescribed there the institution it self must be acknowledged Divine not only providentially but also in regard of the Authority by which it was introduced not only because the Church's Authority in general proceeds from God but also because she is by these Principles authorized to exercise her power in this very matter which I am now discoursing of seeing this determination of Jurisdictions has appeared to be no other but a determination of particular circumstances requisite for the practicableness of Government in general § VIII NOR can they think it strange in reason that the right of these Jurisdictions should be Divine notwithstanding that the limitation of them depends on men especially when by these Principles those men must be supposed to be seconded by a Divine Authority There is hardly any instance of a Divine Authority which does not as to some particular requisite for practice need the accession of a Humane Authority Yet none thinks the obligation resulting from the complex of both to be therefore any thing the less Divine Who doubts but that the Authority even of these particular Books of Scripture which we now receive for Scripture is Divine Yet it is impossible to prove that these particular Books were written by those particular Authors whose names they bear on which notwithstanding the credit of their being Divinely inspired does necessarily depend but by the same way as we prove other matters of Fact that is by Humane Historical Testimony Many believe that the right of Secular Government is Divine and that the punishment of Rebellious Persons is accordingly such as those deserve who resist the Ordinance of God himself Nay this plainly seems to be the design of the Apostles reasoning Rom. xiii 2 Yet there is no present Government in our parts where the determination of the particular Persons who are to govern is not wholly performed by men by men not pretending to inspiration nor yet on that account expecting any extraordinary Revelation The use of Lots and Anguries which might look like consulting the Gods in the matter
are long since discontinued and were not observed in the case of those Princes to whom St. Paul notwithstanding advised the Christians of his time to be subject in regard of Conscience Rom. xiii 5 Yet those Emperors of the Julian Family were thought Vsurpers in that Age and had no more to excuse them from being so besides their Prescription for the time they had been peaceably possessed of the honours enjoyed by them and their not having any visible just competitors And particularly concerning Nero in whose time St. Paul is thought to have written that Epistle it is very well known by what wicked Arts of his Mother Agrippina he got the Empire Yet when he was free from a more just Competitor Britannicus this did not hinder his Authority from being from God nor resistance to him from being a resistance of the Ordinance of God and in that regard from deserving damnation Rom. xiii 1 2. And this must needs be the case where-ever God himself does not immediately reveal himself nor the Persons Authorized by him perform their credentials in the presence of the Persons obliged to believe them They must then assure themselves of the truth of these things only by Humane Testimony Yet because when they are once assured of these matters of Fact which they cannot be assured of but by Humane Testimonies it will then follow that the Revelations are from God therefore the obligation to believe these Revelations is supposed to be so too and the punishment of disbelief is thereupon proportioned to the disbelief not of a Humane but a Divine Authority And therefore this may also be the obligation to submit to the Authority of Jurisdictions notwithstanding that their certain bounds were prefixed by a Humane Authority § IX NOW from this Divine right of Jurisdictions two consequences will follow which it will seriously concern our Adversaries to consider impartially The first is positive That they must be under a Divine Obligation to own the Authority of these Jurisdictions whilest they live within them I do not mean that they are obliged never to go out of them or that when they are out of them they are obliged to their local constitutions any more than any are obliged to live for ever in their Native Kingdom or to observe the Laws of it when they are in Countries of Constitutions different from it but only that they are the same way obliged by God to acknowledg and submit to the Jurisdiction whilest they live in it on the same account as they who believe the Divine Authority of the Secular Government bâ—lieve all the Subjects obliged to submit to the Laws of their Country whilest they live in it as they will answer it to God Now that which will follow from this positive obligation is that they do embrace the Communion and submit to all the unsinful impositions of it that is all which are unsinful to the submitters whatever they be to the imposers and lay out their endeavours to secure the peace of it and to prevent the disturbances of others as they would think themselves obliged to do in the Secular Societies to which they are respectively related Without these things they can no more be supposed to own the Ecclesiastical Authority than they could the Civil if they would wilfully abstein from their Priviledges in it and refuse obedience to its Laws or countenance others in their disobedience to them § X THE Second consequence is Negative that from this Divine Authority of Jurisdictions they must find themselves obliged to forbear all opposite Communions or Assemblies within those Jurisdictions This seems so evident of it self as that I do not know whether any will doubt of it but in such cases wherein evident interest makes them justly suspicious of being partial None doubts but that other Authorities independent on the Supreme in secular Societies do manifestly ruin the Authority and security of such Societies and that he who secretly countenances such independent Authorities cannot at the same time be taken for a good Subject and well affected to the visible Government of his Society but much more if he should do it openly They would in all likelihood think so if themselves were concerned for the Government of it They would not think such Persons well affected to them would deal with them as they do with their Superiors If the power of their Jurisdictions be from God then plainly it is an invasion of their right for others to arrogate or exercise power in their Jurisdictions without their leave It is so even for Persons who have really power in other Jurisdictions but much more for them who never had any power given them much more for their own Subjects who by the common rules of subjection in all Societies of this nature are obliged to duty within their particular districts This must be a double Sacriledg not only as the right of the Jurisdiction it self is on these Principles supposed to be sacred and consequently such as cannot be usurped by any how sacred soever themselves be without Sacriledg but also because the Persons themselves are not sacred who invade those sacred Jurisdictions § XI AND it is particularly to be remarked that the common rights by which the Authority of all these particular Societies and Jurisdictions subsist must pâ—culiarly belong to God and therefore cannot be violated without the most direct affront to the Divine Majesty and the most terrible expectations of punishment They belong I say more immediately to his care than those things which even men are empowered to take care of by virtue of the general Authority which they have received from him and which only concern their own Societies respectively In all subordinations of Governours by how much any rules are of more general concernment by so much more properly they are supposed to exceed the extent of the power of inferior Governours and therefore to belong more properly to him who has the right of that whole extent which is concerned in those rules And therefore seeing that the right of Jurisdictions in general is of much greater extent than any particular Jurisdiction therefore it cannot belong to the right of particular Governours and because it is the common concernment of the whole Catholick Church therefore it must accordingly be proper for him alone who alone is concerned for the whole Catholick Church in general Besides that it is antecedent to the right of all particular Governours For the right of particular Governours within particular Jurisdictions is founded on the right of Jurisdictions in general Therefore it is that particular Governours have right within particular Jurisdictions because there is in general a right in the whole Church to distinguish Jurisdictions and to appropriate the power of them to their respective Officers when they are so distinguished and because according to the common rules of equity to be observed in making this distinction this particular Jurisdiction has fallen to the share of these
particular Governours This therefore cannot be founded on the Authority of particular Governours whose Authority is wholly grounded on it but only on the Authority of God whose Authority alone is antecedent to the Authorities of particular Jurisdictions § XII NOR can this be thought strange in Ecclesiastical Government which is so acknowledged in Civils There are also in them some Laws of the like universal concernment on which the right of all Civil Jurisdictions depend and which are therefore as impossible to be derived from the Authority of particular Governours and as necessary to be derived from God alone Such are the Laws of Nature and of Nations the breach whereof has by all wise men been always thought most piacular and most properly obnoxious to the punishment of God himself Which is a consideration very worthy to be laid to heart by our dissenting Brethren whether it be not equally applicable to this present Subject concerning the right of particular Jurisdictions And if this be acknowledged to be the truth of this matter that the Divine Authority is thus resisted by this disobedience to Humane Jurisdictions what can more agreeably be expected as the punishment of such resistance than that they who are guilty of such resistance by any acknowledgment of a power independent on the Governours of their Jurisdictions should at least lose the advantages they might otherwise expect from the Society to which they joyn themselves I mean those advantages which might otherwise be expected from a conjunction with them considered as a Society especially such advantages as are only to be immediately performed by God whom they must by these Principles be supposed to have disobliged Which will make it reasonable to believe that the Sacraments received against the Authority of these Jurisdictions shall not actually have the benefit of Sacraments and therefore shall not actually contribute to the forgiveness of sins or the giving of the Holy Ghost the way whereby Sacraments are supposed to contribute to them Nay instead of that such communications will incur the guilt of Sacriledg on the same account as Corah and his company were guilty of it though they were consecrated Persons for transgressing the bounds allowed them by the order prescribed by God But how much more must it be so when Persons not having any Consecration at all shall presume to encroach on those sacred rights of their own Superiors which God himself who gave them those rights does hence appear obliged to preserve inviolable § XIII AND indeed I do not understand how the Presbyterians can with any shew of reason defend their own practice of Authority without acknowledging this right of Jurisdictions How can they justifie the Authority of their National and Provincial Synods over all those who live within the Province or Nation represented in the Synods How can they challenge it even over the Independents themselves who live among them notwithstanding their profession of a different Judgment from them notwithstanding their disowning any act whereby they have obliged themselves to submit to their Authority distinct from the Baptism which they have received among them How can they have the confidence to charge even them with Schism for refusing to submit to them or for gathering Churches out of their Parishes if the living within the districts of a Parish could give them no peculiar title to those who did so What can they call this right they pretend to over Persons living within their districts antecedently to any act of their own distinct from their Baptism if it be not Jurisdiction For my part I profess I mean no more at present nor am I sensible that my cause obliges me to mean any more And can they allow of Jurisdiction in Parishes only and not in those greater Bodies which are only Aggregates of Parishes The Authority they challenge to their Provincial and National Synods does plainly shew they cannot do so And how can they possibly deny the same right and reason of Jurisdiction to the Parishes and Diocesses wherein their first Predecessors were baptized How can they think the same Episcopal Jurisdiction any more impaired by their own irregular practices since than they think their own Jurisdiction impaired by the like irregular practices of the Independents They who acknowledg a right over particular Christians antecedently to their own act as these generally do when they speak consequently to their own Principles must needs acknowledg that the power so antecedent to private suffrages may constitute what rules they please for distinguishing the limits of the proportion of particular Governours So that such Persons cannot with any shew of reason doubt of the obligingness of such rules of Jurisdiction when they are once established but only whether this particular rule of judging by the districts of place be established by that antecedent Power But of this there can be no doubt in our present case because there is no other way so much as pretended by our Adversaries themselves for distinguishing the limits of particular Jurisdictions § XIV BUT I proceed to shew 2. How the same thing may be proved against them who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedent to the voluntary Obligations of particular Persons I have already observed how much more consequently these men speak to their Principles than the Presbyterians And it is indeed impossible that these men should own the Authority of Jurisdictions if they will be true to their Principles But then the great reason why it is impossible is particularly that Principle and the consequences of it that they think the obligatory right of all Ecclesiastical power derived from the particular Personal consent of every particular Member and that distinct from his consent to be a Member that is from his consent to Baptism If this be overthrown then the reasons will return which I have urged against those who grant a power in the Church obligatory of all baptized Persons living among them antecedently to their personal Contracts For there is no middle way of dealing in this case They who disown the Original of power to be seated in the people if they own any Ecclesiastical power at all they must needs place it originally in the Governours No third seat can or that I know of has been ever thought of And if it be originally in the Governours then it must be there antecedently to the consent of particular private persons and being so must also oblige antecedently to their consent for it is a contradiction to speak of power without obligation And if so then whoever is a Member of the Church is a Subject of its Government and whoever is a Member of the visible Church is by the same reason a Subject of its visible Government But none can deny that it is the visible Church as well as the invisible of which Baptism makes us Members nay many of our Adversaries especially will say that it is the visible Church rather than the invisible Whence it will follow that none who
really intend that power of Government which he foresaw would follow from this power of the benefits of Ecclesiastical Communion for those on whom he was pleased to confer the power of these benefits And if he did intend any Government at all it must needs have been extremely unpolitick to have intrusted this power into the hands of any but of such whom he designed for Governours For it must have obliged the people to a greater dependence on such Persons than on their Governours themselves which must in case of any difference between them make such Persons too hard for their Governours And that must in the consequence destroy all coercive power over such Persons without which coercive power it is impossible to conceive how any Government can be practicable Which will withal let our Adversaries see how necessary it is that they who have the supreme visible power of these benefits be uncontroulable by any earthly power § VII 5. THEREFORE the power of these benefits of the Society of the Church as it is a Society appears plainly by the Principles of the precedent discourse to be confined to a certain order of men above others who must therefore consequently be understood to be invested with the proper power of governing all others who are by this contrivance of things obliged to depend on them It has appeared that the benefits of the Christian Society as a Society are remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost that the ordinary means of conveying these benefits are the Sacraments that the Sacraments themselves are of no efficacy unless they be validly administred that they are not validly administred unless the Person who administers them be lawfully Authorized to administer them that none can challenge any Authority for this purpose from God but they who have derived it from the Apostles nor any in these days from the Apostles but they who have derived it from them in a continual succession that none can pretend to this succession at least cannot maintein it to future generations out of the Episcopal Communion that a Person living in a particular Jurisdiction cannot expect this benefit of Episcopal Communion from any other Communion but that of the Ordinary of Jurisdiction wherein he lives whilest he lives in it Which will as properly and by the same parity of reason prove that the Ordinary of a particular Jurisdiction is the particular Governour to whom particular Persons are obliged to pay their particular obedience whilest they are within the Jurisdiction as it proves that Bishops are the Governours of the Church in general § VIII AND from hence all the other things necessary in this way for managing the charge of Schism do follow in course especially on the Principles already proved in this Discourse It follows 1. That all our Brethren who live in particular Diocesses are properly subject to the Ordinaries of those Diocesses If the Ordinaries be their Governours it is unavoidable by the Rules of Relation but that our Brethren must as properly be the Subjects of those Ordinaries And 2. That our Brethren must therefore owe their Ordinaries a duty not of reverence only but subjection Reverence may be due from those who are not Subjects But Subjection is the duty which properly regards Subjects as they are Subjects and is therefore as properly due to their Governours as Governours as God himself challenges honour as a Father and Fear as a Master Mal. i. 6 And it is as impossible to own any particular Governours for Governours without paying particular subjection to them as it is impossible to own any particular Person for our Father or Master without paying them the honour or fear which are respectively due to those Relations And 3. That this Subjection which is due to them will require that they should rather yield to their Governours than that they should expect that their Governours should yield to them nay that they are bound in duty to yield in all things that are lawful especially when upon a modest proposal of their reasons to the contrary their Governours profess themselves dissatisfied with those reasons and still require the same things from them as necessary for the publick If the matter of the things required in such a case as this be not sinful the disobedience must needs be so because it is injurious to the rights of Governours And therefore by the Rule of our Brethrens own casuistry they are to chuse it as the safest course rather to hazard the greatest inconveniences to themselves that may follow from the nature of the things required than to hazard the guilt of this sin against God by refusing the duty which he has imposed on them to their Superiors Though I have withal shewn that it were not every sin that would excuse them for the neglect of their duty to Governours but only such a sin as were greater or more evident than the sinfulness of such a neglect and that very few if any sins can be so However 4. Even in those cases wherein their Subjection does not oblige them to active obedience yet it does oblige them at least to passive And it has been shewn that this requires not only that they submit to the punishments inflicted on them by their Superiors but also that they do not joyn with any opposite Society And it has appeared from the sequels of these Principles of Vnity as applied to particular Jurisdictions that all Societies within the Jurisdiction must be opposite who do not own a dependence on the Governours of the Jurisdiction From all which put together it must follow that the separation of which our Adversaries are guilty notoriously is destructive of the Ecclesiastical Government of the respective Jurisdictions wherein they live and consequently Schismatical in respect of those particular Churches as Schism consists in a violation of the Churches Vnity and as the Vnity of those Churches does on these Principles appear to consist in a Vnity of Government § IX BUT our Brethren are not apt to apprehend any great danger in being thus cut off from the Vnity of particular Churches if they may still continue united to the Catholick Church For if this may be their case they may still enjoy all the benefits and comforts of the Christian Religion They may enjoy the benefits For as long as they are Members of the Catholick Church so long they are Members of Christ himself of his Mystical Body and by this means are in as near a capacity to receive all vital influences from him as the Members of the Natural Body are to receive the influences of the natural Life And so long they make up one Legal Person with him and so have a Legal Title to all that he has done and suffered for them on performance of conditions which is all the priviledg that we our selves do challenge on account of our being within the external Communion of the Church They may also enjoy all the comforts of the Christian
Religion even all that assurance of the safety of their condition which they are capable of receiving even in the external Solemnities of the Covenant and the application of the external Seals These themselves they may receive if not in the Church from whence they are ejected yet in some other where they may be received upon their ejection who may have as just an Authority to administer the Sacraments as the Church which has ejected them and is no more obliged to stand to the judgment of the Church who has ejected them than she is to stand to hers but is every way as competent a Judg of the qualifications to be required from those who are to be admitted to her own Communion This indeed seems to be the true reason why all the Discipline of particular Churches has been so insignificant since the Catholick has been divided into so many parties who are ready to receive each others Excommunicates They only can be terrified to do their duty who must otherwise be excluded from the Catholick Church to which alone the priviledges of the Church can be thought confined But for avoiding this whatever censures they lye under from particular Churches two excuses are obvious from our Adversaries Principles Either they make the Vnity of the Catholick Church such as that they may be conteined in it who are excluded from the visible Communion of all particulars or if they require visible Communion with some particular Church to Communion with the Catholick yet they have been used to contein under the name of the Catholick Church all the several divided parties those which are Heretical and Schismatical as well as the Orthodox And upon these terms it is impossible for any censures to deprive of the whole visible Communion of the Church As the case stands now the very case of being excommunicated by one Church is a recommendation to others to receive them And if none others would yet it is but the setting up a new Communion of their own which any censured Persons may do with as good right as many others have done before them § X TO this that I may reply I must first freely confess that if it were possible to retein the Vnity of the Catholick Church whilest men are excommunicated out of the particular Churches to which they are more particularly related at least if their exclusion from their particular Churches were not so much as a presumptive exclusion from the Catholick but that excommunicated Members might not only as certainly be but also as certainly assure themselves that they are Members of the Catholick Church as they could before when they were Members of their own particular Church I should then acknowledg that Persons so excommunicate could not have any reason to apprehend themselves to be in any such danger of Salvation as might oblige them to such unsinful condescensions as those are concerning which I have been speaking in order to the avoiding of that danger For it is to be considered that as the whole immediate effect of Excommunication is privative so the deprivations of the benefits of Ecclesiastical Communion do herein differ from the deprivations of Secular censures that the benefits cannot be taken away in one place if they may be enjoyed in another He who is banished from England may really be deprived of all those accommodations which he is intitled to as a Subject of England which is all that the power of England can do to him and which is a real effect of that power And yet at the same time he may enjoy the like or greater accommodations in France because these are capable of being enjoyed by them who are deprived of their English Freedoms The difference of Country is sufficient in this case to afford some places priviledges different from the priviledges of others Put the Spiritual advantages whereof men are deprived by Excommunication the pardon of sin the giving of the Holy Ghost the promises of future and eternal Rewards are things impossible to be enjoyed in one place if they be wanting in another It is God himself that must immediately ratifie them and his power is equally concerned for the Church who has exercised her power of Excommunication as for her who receives the others Excommunicates And therefore if notwithstanding the Excommunication of such Persons they may yet communicate in other Churches and expect that God should confirm to them the benefits of such Vncanonical Communions they must consequently expect that God in doing so must disanul the censures of the Church which has Excommunicated them Which must consequently disoblige all who think so from all condescensions on their part for the recovery of the Communion of which they are deprived § XI AND if Persons Excommunicated in one place may be received in another without so much as the formalities of an absolution to repeal the sentence which has been passed against them nay must never have been presumed to have been cast out of the Communion of the Catholick Church by the Excommunications of their own Church then they must still be supposed to have continued in a state of Pardon and Possession of the Spirit upon performance of the moral conditions of the Gospel And then what effect can their Excommunication be supposed to have upon them that may oblige them to any condescensions in order to an Absolution And therefore that I may settle the Discipline of particular Churches on a solid foundation it will be necessary to shew that the Vnity of particular Churches is in the ordinary constitution of things so inseparable from the Vnity of the Catholick Church as that whoever is cut off designedly from the Vnity of a particular Church however it come to pass whether by his own act or the act of his Superiors cannot at the same time be presumed to retein the Vnity of the Catholick Church Whence it will follow that as I have proved our Brethrens separation to divide them from the Vnity of their particular Churches of which they are Members respectively so it must consequently divide them from the Vnity of the Catholick Church and so be as properly Schismatical in respect of that as it is in respect of their particular Churches But I could wish that they would remember that the reason obliging me to this is the interest of the Discipline of all particular Churches in it and the unpracticableness of that Discipline without it by what form of Government soever it be administred whether Monarchically or Aristocratically or Democratically All who maintein any power of Church censures are as much concerned for it as I am Neither the Presbyterians nor the Independents themselves can ever expect that their censures can oblige any to perform their duty if all they do be only to exclude him from the Ordinances of their own particular Congregations but that notwithstanding he may as validly partake of Ordinances in other Congregations as he did before and be received on as easie terms as if he
in the Vnity of the Catholick Church must not be any other Communion within the Jurisdiction in which he lives and from which he is supposed to be separated As for any other Churches they are also confined within their own Jurisdictions by the common right of Jurisdictions and so confined as that their intermedlings in other Jurisdictions are not only irregularities but meer Nullities and neither their obtruding Officers can oblige others to receive them nor their presuming to censure or absolve without the consent of the power of the Jurisdiction can oblige either Subjects or subordinate Officers to ratifie their censures And much less can any party of the same Church do it within their own Jurisdiction especially against the consent of the Supreme Governours of that Jurisdiction And the reason is plain â—â—cause in the most confined acceptation of a Church there caâ— be no more than one in a Jurisdiction and therefore the multiplying of opposite Assemblies in the same Jurisdiction cannot muâ—â—iply Churches but still that party and that alone must be the Church of the Jurisdiction which has the original right of Authority on their side It is certain by the fundamental constitutions of all Government that neither the acts of Subjects in opposition to their Governours nor of inferior subordinate Governours in opposition to the Supreme visible Governours nor of a smaller over-voted part in opposition to a prevailing number of suffrages are to be taken for the acts of the Society And on account of some or all these defects no act of any of the Conventicles in London can be taken for the act of the Church of London So that still he that only communicates with the Conventicles may notwithstanding that be excluded from the Communion of all particular Churches in the World even that of London it self And therefore this can never in this way of judging secure any Communicant of his being in the Communion of the Catholick Church § XVI BESIDES it has appeared that as they are no acts of Churches so neither are they valid as to the nature of the thing and therefore cannot validly admit a Member even of that particular Church And if they be not valid in reference to that particular Church I leave it to our Brethrens second thoughts to consider how they can be valid in regard of the Catholick Church It suffices at present that this Nullity of such Sacraments hinders them from making their Communicants Members of any particular Church which is sufficient on our present Principles to deprive them of the comfort of their being assured thereby that they are Members of the Catholick Church And yet if what I have said prove true I have directly proved that they who received invalid Sacraments cannot by virtue of such Sacraments expect the Spirit of Christ or to be validly united into his Mystical Body without which our Adversaries themselves will neither think it possible to be united to the Catholick Church nor could they think a Vnion with the Catholick Church desirable on such terms though it had been possible Besides whoever intermeddles to repeal censures within a particular Jurisdiction against the Superiors of that Jurisdiction cannot be presumed to be a competent Judg of such matters though his Judgment should be never so true and the Superiors never so much mistaken yet in all matters of practice not sinful the Superiors Judgment is that wherein the Subject is obliged to acquiesce as to practice And therefore though it were fit that a Person censured by the Governours of a Jurisdiction should be restored yet none but the Governours themselves who have censured him have power to restore him And therefore though such Persons so restoring him should have right on their side as to the reasonableness of the cause why he should be restored yet still these two cases are very different that it is fit he should be restored and that he actually is so And though the Superiors themselves who have power of restoring him do judg it fit that he should be restored yet even their judging it fit that he should be restored does not actually restore him And therefore if the Authority of these Persons fail who presume to restore a Person censured by the Governours of the Jurisdiction against the consent of those Governours that alone is sufficient to invalidate the act of his restitution And if he be not actually restored it plainly follows that a Person so restored is not yet an actual Member of that particular Church and therefore notwithstanding that restitution still continues out of the Communion of all particular Churches and consequently of the Catholick Church in general § XVII AND these same reasons which prove that the acts of usurping Subjects cannot make a Member of that particular Church to which they are related as Members will also prove that their being received into the Communion of other Churches by alike unauthorized Members can never make them Members of those Churches into which they are pretended to be received And therefore if valid Sacraments be only administred in the Episcopal Communion in opposition to all others at least in such places where there are such opposite Communions and it is impossible for any to be made visibly a Member of any Church without a visible participation of its Sacraments then no reception by Persons divided from Episcopal Authority in other places can make them Members of the Churches of those places where they are received If the Conventicles in London have no power to make a Member of the Church of London then though such a censured Person as I am speaking of who should despair of a visible Communion with the Catholick Church in London should remove to York yet he could not better his condition by that removal The Conventicles in York are for the same reason under the same incapacities of making him a Member of the Church of York as they in London were for making him a Member of the Church of London And let him remove never so often yet wher-ever the same reason holds there will still remain the same impossibility of a relief Let him hold correspondence with never so many Conventicles in never so many or distant places all they can do put together cannot make him a Member of one particular Church § XVIII TO which if we add that all those Churches if any there be not Episcopally governed not yet opposed to any Canonical-Episcopacy of the place they live in if notwithstanding they keep an amicable correspondence with the Episcopal Communions and withal keep true to the terms of correspondence they cannot receive to their Communion any who has refused to communicate with those Episcopal Communions with which they mantein correspondence whilest he lived among them and was subject to them As for a surreptitious Communion which may be obteined with forein Churches without knowledg of their condition at home it can be of no more validity before God than their surreptitious bargains
respectively related And then as it is in the power of the Governours of particular Churches to deprive them at least of the Communion of their own particular Churches and so to cut them off from their being Members of them it must also consequently be in their power to cut them off from their Communion with the Catholick Church to which they have no other title but that Membership This therefore I shall endeavour to prove from the Principles which I intend to make use of for proving this present Particular § XXII IN order hereunto I desire it may be observed 1. That the nature of the inconvenience incurred by this deprivation of Communion in their own particular Churches is such as that it is impossible that the censure can be valid in their own Churches unless it be valid in others The design of the suspending from the Sacraments is for so long to deprive the Person of the benefit of the Sacraments till he yield to the thing required from him by the Authority by which he is suspended Either therefore he has still a title to the benefit of the Sacraments from which he is suspended or he has not If he have still as good a Covenant-title to the benefits of the Sacrament as before and can as well assure himself of his title what loss can it be for him to be deprived of the Sacramental Elements How can it ever oblige him in conscience to submit to that Authority which can inflict no greater punishment than this deprivation If therefore God himself be obliged to ratifie the censures of particular Churches in order to the preservation of their Government then it must follow that the Person so deprived must lose his interest in the New-Covenant of the Gospel and all the priviledges consequent to that interest And he who has lost his interest in the Covenant cannot retrieve it by a bare change of the place and Jurisdiction He that has no interest in the Gospel-Covenant cannot possibly continue a Member of the Catholick Church whose Vnion consists in their confederation in the same Covenant And considering that the Covenant is the same by which they are united to God and to each other nay indeed that their Vnion to each other is grounded on their Vnion with Christ they are therefore Fellow-Members of each other Eph. iv 25 1 Cor. v◠17 because they are all Members of the same Mystical Body of Christ they are made one Spirit by partaking of that one Spirit which is also his therefore it is impossible that they can be separated from this Mystical Vnion with one another unless they be both or one of them at least disunited from Christ which they who are must by necessary consequence be disunited from all the Members of that Mystical Body And however that Vnion with other Members could afford little comfort to a Person concerned in it which were consistent with their separation from Christ their common Head So also they who are deprived of the title the Covenant is capable of giving them to remission of sins in one Church cannot at the same time be judged to be free from their sins in the other even on performance of the Moral Duties and he who is not so cannot be judged to be in a present capacity of being a Church-Member This proves at least that the Church which thinks the censure pronounced against any Person to have been pronounced validly and to have cut him off from the Church wherein he was censured cannot at the same time think him united to themselves in the bond of Catholick Vnity if they think the Church from whence he is divided to be Catholick And the case is the same whether the Person so divided have divided himself by separation or have been divided from them by the censures of a Lawful Authority Still so long as he is divided from any one Church that is Catholick he cannot continue his Vnity with them if they continue theirs with the Church from which he is divided § XXIII HENCE it follows 2. That if such a Person be received to the Sacraments in another Church without as good an Authority for uniting him to the Vnity of the Catholick Church as that was by which he was deprived only on supposition of the continuance of his invisible Vnity with the Catholick Church notwithstanding his visible separation from a part of it such Sacraments must as to him be perfect Nullities and cannot convey to him the proper benefits of Sacraments even on the performance of the general Moral conditions of Faith and Repentance For the Sacraments cannot convey the merits and influences of Christ to any but those who are united in his Mystical Body by the same proportion of reasoning as the Vessels by which the vital influences are conveyed in the Natural Body can convey them to none but those who are parts of the Body to which they are supposed to belong The strength of this Mystical reasoning I have elsewhere proved Seeing therefore that the Sacraments can convey no influences but unto them who are united to Christ and on the supposition I am now speaking of the Persons thus received to the Sacrament cannot be supposed thus united to him therefore such a Communicant could not expect any benefit from such Sacraments not only in regard of his want of those moral dispositions but also in regard of his incapacity though he had them This therefore will be the case where the reception to Communion is only granted as a Testimony of the Vnity which the Person so received is supposed to have invisibly even antecedently to such reception But if it be designed further not to testifie that Catholick Vnity which he is supposed to retain but to restore it to him who is supposed to have lost it by his separation from his own Church this is another case And concerning it I say § XXIV 3. THAT no particular Church whatsoever can by its Authority alone restore any to Catholick Vnity who has been separated from it by another without the consent of the Church by which he was at first separated This is plain from what has been said before because this is impossible to be done without disanulling the Authority by which he was at first separated from the Church For if this later Church can restore such a Person to Catholick Vnity then it may also restore him to Vnity with that Church by which he was at first separated And if so then he may have a right to the Communion even of his own Church even whilest he is actually separated from them And then what effect can such an Authority have whereby it may appear to be Authority if it cannot deprive him of so much as the right to that Communion from which he is so separated Seeing therefore both these exercises of Authority cannot be supposed valid at the same time and seeing therefore that God is obliged to disanul the one if he will ratifie the
other it will not be difficult to determine which of the two must prove invalid The Church which endeavours to restore such a Person is supposed to be only equal with the Church which has rejected him and therefore can have no Authority to reverse her censures And therefore as God is not obliged to ratifie that act of hers in regard of her Authority so he is obliged to disanul it as he is the common Governour of all the Churches and as he is thereupon obliged to maintein Discipline and that correspondence between the Churches which is so necessary for the preservation of Discipline § XXV HENCE it follows 4. That all that can be done by other Churches receiving a Person separated from the Communion of his own Church can only be to judg of his case not so as to oblige the Church to which he belongs originally to stand to their judgment but only so far as concerns their own Jurisdiction They can judg whether they be in conscience or for the maintenance of their common correspondence obliged to ratifie their censures within their own respective Jurisdictions that is they can judg concerning the validity of the censures whether they be grounded on a cause properly belonging to the Authority by which they were censured and whether they have reason therefore to presume them valid before God that is indeed whether they do really cut him off from Catholick Vnity And in case they find the sentence pronounced against him in his own Church invalid in it self they may then receive him to their own Communion yet so as that they do not pretend any Authority to reverse the sentence pronounced against him in his own Church but only to declare the original invalidity and that only with relation to their own obligation to confirm it within their own Jurisdictions nor pretend to restore him to the Catholick Vnity which he had lost by the censures which had been passed upon him in his own Church but only receive him as an acknowledgment of his uninterrupted right to Catholick Communion and of their own obligation as parts of the Catholick Church to admit him to their own Communion This certainly they may do by their own Authority without any the least encroachment on the Authority which had originally passed the censure not as superior to that Authority but only as not subject to it § XXVI AND this seems actually to have been the case of the Western Church in the cause of Athanasius Whilest he was charged only with Canonical matters they were willing to hear what might be said against him and in the mean time to suspend him from their own Communion But when they found partly by the notorious conviction of the disingenuity of the accusations of this kind as in the charges of the suborned whore and the cutting off the hand of Arsenius and prophaning the sacred offices at Mareotis and partly by their delays and evasions of this kind of tryal that this was not the thing indeed insisted on how much soever it was pretended but that it was rather an artifice made use of for the subversion of the common faith professed by him they must then look on such censures as passed upon him rather for his Faith than for the Ecclesiastical crimes which were pretended Wherein if they judged right the censures must have been essentially invalid on two accounts both as to the cause for which they were inflicted and as to the Persons by whom As to the cause for which they were inflicted For they could not believe that God would deprive him of Catholick Vnity only for mainteining the Catholick Faith which was one of the principal foundations of that Vnity And as to the Persons by whom they were inflicted who being Hereticks were uncapable of being Bishops and consequently of any Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction besides that they were not obliged to maintein any correspondence with Hereticks and therefore could not be confined to Canons in dealing with them the Canons being only terms of correspondence Though in the case wherein our Adversaries are concerned there is much more reason for the confinement of this power of other Churches For the power is much more absolute which particular Churches may challenge over their particular Subjects than that which Provincial or National Synods can pretend to over particular Churches And therefore the obligation to confirm their censures must be proportionably greater on account of the common correspondence § XXVII NOW if this be so then it will plainly follow that the Governours of particular Churches do as often deprive of Catholick Vnity as they deprive any really of the Communion of their own Churches and that all that other Churches can do cannot really unite any to the Catholick Church who has been separated from any particular Church by a just Authority without the consent of that Authority by which he was separated and that if their receiving such a Person to their Communion do him any good it must be only in such cases wherein he was really never deprived of a right to Communion even with that Church whose actual Communion has been denied him The only thing remaining further for settling the Discipline of the Church on a solid foundation can only be to see in what cases the censures may be presumed valid and wherein it may therefore be known that the restitution is invalid and unsafe to be trusted and whether any relief may be expected thence by Persons in our Brethrens circumstances If either by any censure of their Superiors or by their own resistance and separation from them they be really separated from their own Churches to which they were originally related they must consequently be separated from the Vnity of the Catholick Church nor can they be restored to it but by being reunited to their own particular Churches and that by a reconciliation as visible as their separation And for clearing this that their separation must needs be a real separation even in the esteem of God himself I desire it may be considered § XXVIII 5. THAT whatever is necessary for the design of Gods establishment that he must by his design be obliged to ratifie whether he has expresly said he will do so or no. Nay indeed there can be no necessity that he should expresly warn them of it who are already sufficiently convinced that this is agreeable to his design For it is certain that God cannot design an end without the means nor be ignorant of what is requisite to his design as a means nor fail where the means belong to his part of the Covenant to see them performed as I have already shewn that it is his part to perform the benefits of the Sacraments None but he can immediately give the Spirit and apply the forgiveness of sins which are there promised But yet he is obliged to do so when the Persons Authorized by him do it in his name and with reference only to that end for which he has
given them that Authority If therefore Government be a thing designed by God and the ratification of this separation by God be necessary for the end of this Government I do not know what can be required further to prove that God is obliged to ratifie it The former has already been proved and the later will appear by easie inferences from it especially considering the peculiar circumstances of our Adversaries case The practicableness of any Government will require 1. A power of determining indifferent circumstances and 2. A power of obliging Subjects to stand to the judgment of Governours concerning the expediency of such determinations at least to acquiesce and submit in practice though they may otherwise think them mistaken in their judgments and 3. A power of obliging Subjects to a passive obedience even in things unlawful so long as the title to this Government is lawful And this passive obedience implies that they must not assume a power which is not committed to them in any case at all no extremity whatsoever can warrant that that for the same reason they do not abet others who are guilty of it that because the independency of Societies cannot possibly be understood within a Jurisdiction already rightfully possessed without either assuming or abetting such an Vsurpation besides the resistance that must thereby be made against the lawful Authority of the Jurisdiction therefore no opposite Societies be erected or abetted within settled Jurisdictions These are things so necessary to Government in general as that the Authority exercised in these cases must be valid if there be any Authority at all acknowledged that may properly deserve that name And therefore in these cases there can be no necessity to descend to the merit of the cause Whatever the cause be so long as it is reducible to any of these Heads the presumption lyes clear in favour of the Governours § XXIX BY this it will appear that our Brethrens separation for any of these causes is altogether unjustifiable on their part whence it will follow that if they be separated by their Superiors for any cause of this kind they are separated as well for a just cause as by a just Authority so that nothing can be wanting for making their separation valid before God And though their separation be intirely their own act without any express censures of their Superiors yet it will as effectually cut them off from the Vnity of that Church from which they separate as if they were deprived by Authority For the great design of God in joyning the Grace of the Sacraments with the external participation of the Elements being by this contrivance of things to oblige them to adhere to their Superiors without whose consent they cannot enjoy the Sacraments the reason of the thing will require that they lose those Graces as well by their own separation of themselves from their Superiors as by being separated by them The Vnity of the Church is alike prejudiced both ways and if withal we consider this right of Governours as designed by God for a preservative of Vnity nay indeed as the very bond of Vnity of a Body Politick it will then appear that a separation from visible Governours must be a direct violation of this Vnity and the rather so because it is impossible that it should not be injurious to the rights of Governours which God himself has designed for the preservation of Vnity Nay it plainly overthrows their coercive power over Malefactors by which they are enabled to preserve this Vnity For if all they can do for this purpose be only to cut them off from their Communion and they may elude this by cutting themselves off first this is an art that may be made use of by any who are objects of their Discipline and must therefore render their whole power ineffectual As therefore this visible separation does evidently cut them off from any legal notorious pretence to Vnity so by its opposing the design and means appointed by God for the preservation of Vnity it must also cut off such Separatists from all hopes of relief in point of equity For all that can be said to justifie mens claim to the equity of Gods promises when they evidently fail of performing the ordinary conditions of those promises can only be their compliance with Gods design in making those promises which could not in their circumstances be complied with by the use of the ordinary means But this cannot be pleaded in our Adversaries behalf And therefore such a separation as this must really cut off the Members so separated from Catholick Vnity and consequently the reconciliation made without the consent of the Church which had been particularly injured by the separation must be invalid and cannot expect the Divine ratification § XXX AT least upon this account the Church which would venture to reconcile them would have reason to believe that they were really disunited from the Catholick Church antecedently to her own reconciliation Whence it will follow that she cannot truly declare them united And therefore unless her act of reconciliation can reunite them whom she finds disunited it can signifie nothing for the comfort of the Persons reconciled by her But besides the reasons now-mentioned there are others sufficient to convince such a reconciliation not only of irregularity but of invalidity also both in regard of the reconciliation it self and in regard of the correspondence she is obliged to maintein In regard of the reconciliation it self because indeed it nulls it self For if she have no power to cut off she can have none to reunite them who are cut off by others And upon the same reasons by which she deprives other Churches of having a power to cut off that Member which she is pleased to receive to her Communion and to own as still united notwithstanding what has been done for cutting him off from the Vnity of his own Church she must also deny that power in her self to separate any of her own Members from her own Vnity For if on the terms now-mentioned as necessary for the preservation of Government in general his own Church has not a power to deprive him of her own Vnity she can have it in no case at all nor can any other Church have it because it is the same power that is supposed common to all particular Churches This will at least shew that they who admit of any such power of Churches to punish the misdemeanours of particular Subjects with an effectual deprivation of her own Communion cannot in reason look upon the reception as valid at least so far as it is only declarative And that it cannot be valid by way of Authority to restore to Catholick Vnity those who had been validly separated from it will appear from the other consideration of the correspondence they are obliged to maintein with all other Churches For it having appeared that by the Divine contrivance of things every particular Church is obliged to ratifie the
by any one before he could be qualifyed for judging concerning them he must in the same prudence think it the safest course to relie on the judgment of such as were skilful And when he must in pursuance of this discourse find himself obliged to trust some guide there are peculiar reasons why he should in prudence submit himself to the guidance of his Ecclesiastical Superiors rather than any others Besides the equal skilfulness of such Superiors with any others who might pretend to guide him besides the peculiar obligation of providence to direct them who as Superiors have so many presumptions in favour of them to oblige others to acquiesce in their determinations and therefore whose errors must in this regard prove of so fatal consequence to the prejudice of Multitudes of good and well-meaning Persons I say besides these things he will hereby secure himself the use of the ordinary means of Salvation which must needs be acknowledged to be a very prudent and affecting consideration to sway a doubtful practice He who were truâ—â— sensible how much he must be a loser by living out of all 〈◊〉 so as to want those ordinary Assistances to which Communicants are intitled and which a daily experience of his own frailties would make him very unwilling to want and were withal sensible how not only fruitless but mischievous it would be to gain the external Elements in an unwarrantable Communion would find that within him which would never suffer him to forfeit the external Communion of the Church but upon reasons extremely weighty and considerable As nothing under sin would be judged a sufficient reason so neither would any evidence concerning the sinfulness of a condition of Communion be judged sufficient but such as were drawn from the nature of the thing not from any contrary Humane Authority nor even any such evidence from the nature of the thing which were not of greater importance and more convictive than those which recommend the credibility of Ecclesiastical Authority Which will yet further diminish the number of the doubts of this kind Which might be supposed incident to candid though illiterate persons § XVII BUT let us suppose them advanced yet higher to be convinced by reasons intrinsick to the thing of its sinfulness and suppose we those reasons stronger than the reasons of credibility of their Ecclesiastical Superiors all that would follow even so would be that it ought not to be done for the credit of any Humane Authority that should call it lawful But may it not be sometimes done when it cannot be omitted without a greater sin Will it not in such a case cease to be a sin when both are unavoidable Undoubtedly it will if its sinfulness depend on circumstances which is the most our Adversaries can pretend concerning our conditions of Communion For from our Principles it has appeared that the sins of disobedience to Ecclesiastical Superiors and of dividing the Church or separating from it are of a higher guilt than can be pretended to be in those sinful conditions even according to them who believe the conditions sinful They will not pretend the sin of wearing a Surplice c. equal to the sin unto death to that against the Holy Ghost or those spoken of Heb. VI. or X. § XVIII BUT if the real sinfulness of such a condition be yet further supposed not to be circumstantial but in the nature of the thing absolutely considered then I confess the thing is by no means to be done not that it is at any hand lawful to avoid it by flying into a greater sin but because there is no necessity of doing either He that cannot communicate but on conditions which he believes sinful may forbear the Communion which he cannot keep but on such conditions But such forbearance would be no sin as separation would be even in such a case For still dividing of the Church disrespect to Superiors usurpation of a Sacred Power or abetting such an usurpation would be as essentially and unalterably sinful as such conditions of Communion could be pretended to be And therefore even in such a case he would continue as much obliged to avoid separation as to avoid the Communion which could not be had without such sinful compliances Nay by so much the more as the sinfulness of such a separation must be supposed greater than the sinfulness of such a Communion Which will let even the ignorant Person I am speaking of see his obligation to passive obedience where he cannot pay active to his Ecclesiastical Superiors and that this duty of his passive obedience will oblige him to forbear opposite Communions even where he cannot by any lawful compliances enjoy the lawful one This does at least reach the case of Laicks and with regard to Communions destitute of sufficient Authority for which I am at present concerned § XIX BUT besides this general suitableness of our Hypothesis for practice It is particularly considerable 2. That it is peculiarly suited to the practice of a Society of such a nature as the Church for preserving Vnity and a due respect to Authority in it For the Church as a Body Politick must always preserve a coercive power over her own Subjects And that 1. As well in persecution as prosperity For persecution was indeed the principal let she had reason to expect when her Government was first established and for which it is therefore most credible that her Government then was peculiarly fitted and therefore she must have been enabled to maintein this Authority independently on the favour of the secular Magistrate And therefore 2. She must have been enabled for this purpose without any title to the Bodies or Fortunes of her Subjects and so without any power of using coercive means of these kinds whether by employing her obedient Subjects to inflict such penalties on her disobedient ones or by moving the secular Magistrate to it Because these are things to which as she can pretend no right as a Spiritual Society so she cannot expect to have them actually in her power in such a time of persecution § XX NOW for mainteining such a coercive power in a Society under such disadvantages It is plain 1. That the Authority must be purely Spiritual and coercive only over the consciences of its Subjects It must be Spiritual because Christ has given his Officers by vertue of their being Officers of his Church no title to any temporals at all And therefore they cannot by virtue of their being his Officers have so much as a good title to dispossess their Subjects of their Lives or Fortunes It can only be over their Subjects consciences because by want of their title to externals they can have no coercive power over their Bodies And therefore what coercive power they have must be over their consciences or they can have none at all Whence it will follow that they must needs destroy all coercive power in the Church who pretend that Ecclesiastical Laws do not oblige the
In order to the obliging Subjects to this compliance to their Spiritual Superiors it is also further necessary that the distribution of these Spiritual rewards and the infliction of these spiritual punishments be some way at the disposal of these spiritual Governours and therefore that God do not so immediately and arbitrarily give the one or inflict the other but that the Church may have an influence on the actual determination of the Divine pleasure in these affairs so that it may be presumed that God will bestow his spiritual blessings or inflict his spiritual punishments according to the Churchâ—s censures or recommendations For this is the only way to determine mens respect to Ecclesiastical Officers For as no Governour can awe without he have the disposal of the rewards and punishments belonging to his respective Jurisdiction so neither can Ecclesiastical Officers compel any by their spiritual Authority without the disposal of these spiritual rewards and punishments § XXVI AND 3. It is necessary that evidence be given to convince Subjects that they may expect spiritual rewards by their obedience to Ecclesiastical Officers and fear spiritual punishments upon their disobedience and that this evidence be suited to the capacities of the Persons to be affected with it For unless they can be convinced of it it can never awe them and unless it be suited to their capacities it can never convince them Now it is plain that the immediate disposal of these spiritual rewards and punishments cannot be intrusted to the Ecclesiastical Officers as the power of temporal rewards and punishments may be to the seculars who when they have the power of the Sword once committed to them need no further assistance of the power that gave it them for rewarding their obedient and punishing their refractory Subjects But Spiritual rewards and punishments are not immediately capable of being given to men in this Life and though they were yet Subjects are not capable of being assured of them because they are not obnoxious to the discovery of sence And therefore the only way for Subjects to be convinced that the rewards promised and the punishments denounced by the Church shall be performed accordingly must be to assure them that God in whose power alone they are immediately will oblige himself to act in these particulars according to the Church's determination And yet because Church-Officers are fallible and like other men obnoxious to humane frailties and there is therefore an extreme on the other hand to be avoided in the Divine Government of the Church that in case of error of the Keys many very innocent Persons must miscarry many times only for acting according to their own more-rightly-informed consciences and therein only for preserving their Loyalty only to their Supreme in opposition to their subordinate Governours that is indeed for doing that which if they had neglected had made them obnoxious to punishment if God should peremptorily have obliged himself to have conformed his own actings to the Church's determinations § XXVII THEREFORE 4. The most prudent expedient so to provide for these harder and rarer cases as yet not to deprive the Church of that assurance of the validity of her Sentences as may terrifie her Subjects from disobedience is this to give much better assurance that the Church's promises shall be ratified by God and a greater fear that the Church's threats shall be inflicted than otherwise For this as I have shewn will oblige men in prudence to presume for the Church as the safest way and never to disobey her but on extremely hard and evident danger of sin and where they do so to be wary of transgressing their own bounds not to deny passive where they cannot give active obedience for fear of weakening their title to the equity of God and making their already-uncomfortable condition yet more hazardous And as by this means the condition of such Dissenters is not made desperate so it is very fit it should lye under some discouragement both because the instances are comparatively but very rare and unlikely and the Persons very few that were requisite for managing such a breach conscientiously and it is a constant rule of prudence to frame general provisions by general cases and to be less solicitous for the rarer and to discourage others from such attempts who might not be likely to manage them with the like good design and moderation and to oblige even such good Persons themselves to a greater wariness in making the breach at first and a constant industry and calmness of Spirit to be always ready to be reconciled on any tolerable terms And these are certainly designs very necessary for such a Government as this we speak of § XXVIII AND 5. As wise a way as can be taken for securing the assurance of Salvation greater in the Communion of the Church than out of it is to confine a Legal Title to the promises even on performance of the moral conditions to the Communion of the Church and to allow no other Plea but that of equity without it And this has appeared from our Principles to be not only wise but just too § XXIX AND 6. The best way of putting it in the Church's power to admit to or exclude from a Legal Title to the promises is to put the Covenant in her power by virtue of which God is in a Legal way obliged to fulfil his promises § XXX AND 7. The only way of putting this Covenant in her power is to confine all its Legal obligation to some external Solemnities which may be capable of being confined and being known to be so to the Governours of the Church For it is only of these externals that Subjects can judg and these are indeed the only things which are capable of being obnoxious to Ecclesiastical power And therefore it is only by Gods confining his own influences on the spiritual rewards to these external solemnities that he can put the rewards themselves in the power of Ecclesiastical Governours At least this is the only way we know of which is sufficient to shew that we have no reason to expect any other § XXXI AND 8. The best way of appropriating these Solemnities to Church-Governours is by giving them only a Legal power of acting in the name of God the want of which Legal power will invalidate a Legal obligation in what is done in supposition of it either as subordinate Governours or as persons peculiarly consecrated for that purpose And for our present design it is very sufficient that God do on the performance of these external Solemnities admit us to an actual Legal Title to the promises as far as the Covenant it self is capable of giving us a Legal Title to them that is no otherwise than on performance of obedience and that the Church's exclusion from these Solemnities do also exclude men from such a Legal Title But neither of these do oblige God to any unequal dealing to Persons wrongfully excommunicate For still there is no
Covenant to condemn whom the Church condemns though the Person so condemned cannot plead any Legal Interest in the Divine Covenant for his Salvation So that by these Principles God is under no Legal Obligation to punish him Yet his loss of a Legal Title to the promises may be indeed a great discomfort to him in this Life Which as I have already shewn to be sufficient for mainteining the Government of the Church which is only a Government for this Life so it may justly be inflicted even on particular innocent Persons for so great an advantage of the Society by the same Principles of Justice by which all great Societies are governed who never think it unequal to suffer some few innocents in rarer cases to suffer some inconveniences for the benefit of the whole And it makes amends to them for all that even by our Principles God is still at liberty to be as bountiful as he pleases to them in the other Life He may there give them those Blessings to which they had indeed no Legal Title much more of which they could not in this Life assure themselves by any Legal Claim in case they really had a Legal Title However this may suffice to shew how this contrivance of things will secure the Church as great a â—oercive power over her own Subjects as she can be supposed capable of even in times of the severest persecutions Which will by the Principles now laid down shew how very likely it is that this is the true Notion of Ecclesiastical Vnity and therefore withal how very probable it is that in violating this Vnity they must prove guilty of that which will properly deserve the name of SCHISM § XXXII I NOW proceed 2. To shew how that by the same Principles the best account may be given of the real danger and mischievousness of the sin of SCHISM The ordinary ways of stating it have either extremely obscured the thing or the danger of it To resolve the blame of a Separation as our Brethren do into the merit of the particular things for which the Separation is made and to make no further mischief in abetting the wrong side of the controversie or advantage in following the right than that of believing a false or disbelieving a true Proposition which yet is disputed among good wise men whether it be true or false must leave the generality of illiterate Persons in an indifferency with what Communion they joyn which is in truth the case we generally find them in or involve them in inextricable perplexities in chusing the right one For how can they think purely intellectual mistakes very piacular in the eyes of God especially where they are so very reconcilable with a good meaning and an innocent practice Or if they were so in questions of a clear resolution and to learned and judicious Persons who might be supposed to have such abilities and opportunities for resolving them as that they could hardly be mistaken in them without being extremely wanting to themselves yet how can they think it credible that God should be so extremely severe to exact a belief of the true side in matters so extremely disputable to exact it even from unskilful Laicks and that even where their guides whom they must needs trust who find themselves so unqualified to guide themselves in such disputes are themselves so extremely divided Where opinions are so very different and contradictory the most illiterate Person that is who has but common sence must needs think some of them mistaken And can he at the same time find in his heart to believe that God will treat himself with any severity for not discovering those truths concerning which he finds Persons incomparably more qualified than himself to be mistaken This I am verily persuaded not only to be suitable to the condition of the generality of this sort of Persons but also to be their actual discourse whenever they allow themselves the liberty of any serious thoughts concerning this matter it is so very agreeable to their practice We see them go indifferently to Churches or Conventicles according as they are affected to the Ministers not on any constant Principles concerning the Communions § XXXIII I KNOW they do endeavour to charge heavier accusations on the practice of SCHISM than barely the wrong belief or disbelief of a disputable proposition But when they come to be examined closely either they will prove so small or be again resolved into such nice and intricate disputes in order to the charging any with their actual guilt as that no particular consciences can be moved with any great horror of them either to believe them criminal in any high degree or that themselves in any particular case are guilty of them They pretend that charity requires forbearance and a keeping in mutual Communion as far as is possible and therefore that SCHISM is a violation of this grace which is indeed the sum of practical Christianity But when again both these particulars are examined by their Principles no Person need to be very apprehensive of this danger For what great crime can it be to separate from the Communion of men for the cause of God What great horror can they have at it supposing they should prove mistaken in the event Nay is not their Charity to God pretended as the reason why they conceive themselves obliged to separate from their Brethren This is a thing they have not yet endeavoured to explain by any Principles how their love to God to use the Apostles expression obliges them to love their Brethren also and to communicate with them whose Communion is with the Father and the Son Nay according to them it is very hard to reconcile their love to God with their love to Ecclesiastical Communion Even a probable persuasion of their consciences is according to their Principles sufficient to excuse their separations And besides that this does again resolve the debate into disputable Prepositions it must needs be an extremely barren cause indeed that can be destitute of so much as probable Arguments for its support § XXXIV BUT wherein can this great uncharitableness consist Not in any great mischief done to themselves by their separation They do not much value the loss of the Sacramental Elements though they should be forced to lose them The same reasons which made them believe that their separation from men was for Gods sake will also incline them to believe that if they had a greater opinion of the advantage of the Sacraments than it appears they have yet the spiritual advantages of the Sacraments should be supplied by him for whose cause they had made the separation and in that case the want of the external Elements could be no great loss indeed Nor are they by their Principles obliged even in that case to lose the Elements themselves For they can easily joyn in a Confederacy among themselves and when they have done so this very necessity is either thought a sufficient Call
one with another And it is to be remembred that in these matters of Communion the Divine ratification is the only thing considerable This is the true case of our Non-Conforming Brethren And this being supposed to be their case and withal that the things which I have endeavoured to prove in this Discourse are true I do not see how it is possible for them to prove that when they are out of the Communion of the Church of England they are in Communion with any other particular Church in the World that may give them any plausible pretence of continuing in the Communion of the Catholick Church Though other absolute Churches independent on the Church of England might receive them to their Communion who are separated from the Communion of our Church and the Sacraments administred to such Persons were valid Sacraments yet this can afford no comfort to our present Non-Conformists because they cannot plead any countenance from any such Churches And this were sufficient for my present design to prove that they are actually out of the Communion of the visible Catholick Church § XIX BUT because this is a thing which our Independent Brethren do usually profess themselves not to understand how any can communicate with the whole Catholick Church or consequently be excluded from Catholick Communion and because it must be a much more affecting consideration to them to cut them off from all hopes of reâ—â—eâ— on pretence of any claim to a Vnion with the Catholick Church if it may be proved that their separation from their own particular Church must not only de facto cut them off from all communion with other Churches but de jure ought to do so and therefore that all that other Churches can do for them cannot restore them to that Catholick Vnity which they must have lost by their separation from any one particular Church whilest it remains Catholick that is whilest it mainteins the terms of Catholick correspondence Therefore 5. I proceed further to shew that such Separatists cannot maintein their title to Catholick Vnity by being received into any other Churches though otherwise absolute and unaccountable to the Church from whence they are separated By Catholick Vnity I do not here mean as our Independent Brethren do a Vnity of meeting ordinarily in the same Assemblies That I confess unpracticable in the Catholick Church But as the absent Members of particular Churches do not by every particular absence lose the right of Vnion with their particular Churches because as long as they submit to the conditions of Communion they have a right to be received to Communion as often as they shall be pleased to come to it and are accordingly properly said to be united to it and to be in actual Communion with it even when they do not actually communicate with it at all so is the case in reference to Catholick Communion Every Person by his Baptism in any particular Church is admitted a Member of the Catholick Church not of the Elect alone nay not at all according to those who say that they who fall away totally and finally when they are adult could never have been Elect whiles they were Infants but of the visible Church also And that plainly appears hence that all agree that if he have occasion to travel into forein Churches he has a right to be received to the external visible Priviledges of baptized Persons among them only on a certificate of the Baptism received at home without reiterating it in the several Churches where he desires to be admitted to Communion Only the reason of our Brethrens misapprehensions seems to be this that they seem to conceive his right to the particular Church where he is baptized to result from his Vnion with the Catholick Church whereas indeed his right to communion with the whole Catholick Church results rather from that actual visible Communion in which Baptism does visibly invest him with his particular Church as all other Churches are obliged to maintein a correspondence with this particular Church and therefore to ratifie the Sacraments therein administred as validly administred § XX THIS is an observation of very considerable influence upon my present design If Baptism did indeed primarily admit a Person into the Catholick Church and secondarily into the particular Church in which the Baptism was received as a part of the Catholick Church then our Adversaries would reason very consequently They might then very reasonably pretend that the Vnion here made were an invisible Vnion for so that must needs be which can be supposed to be made with the whole Catholick Church antecedently to any visible Vnion with any particular Church Then they might reasonably plead a Vnion with the Catholick Church though out of all visible Vnion with any particular Church because their Vnion with the Catholick Church would be antecedent and therefore Independent on their Vnion with any particular Church Then they might justly question the right of particular Churches to deprive them of their Vnion with the Catholick when they could not think themselves in a worse condition upon their separation from their particular Church than they were in antecedently to their Vnion with it but then they thought themselves united to the Catholick Church They might justly continue their claim of right to Vnion even with that particular Church from which they were separated on the same Principles of their continuing still united to the Catholick Church and the right to Communion even with that particular as well as other Churches being grounded on their persevering Vnion with the Catholick Church And this right to Communion would be as properly an actual Communion with that Church it self as absenters and those who forbear the Sacrament are notwithstanding said to be in actual Communion with it Which if it should prove true it will then be as impossible for particular Churches to deprive any Member so much as of their own Communion as it is impossible to deprive them of their invisible Vnion with the Catholick Church from which this right to Communion with particular Churches is conceived to follow by so necessary a consequence But methinks the destructiveness of these consequences to any Discipline whatsoever should make all Patrons of Discipline wary of the Principles from whence they do so inevitably follow § XXI BUT if on the contrary the right of Catholick Communion be grounded as to particular Persons on the right they enjoy to the Communion of the particular Churches where they live and the right those particular Churches have as parts of the Catholick Church to have their Sacraments acknowledged and their Members received in all other Churches whom they take for Catholick then that which deprives them of the Communion of their own Churches must by consequence deprive them of the right of being Members of the Catholick Church to which they have no other title than what they can derive from their being Members of their own particular Churches to which they are
conscience especially they who urge it in that extravagant sence in which some seem to mean it and more are obliged to mean it by the interest of their reasonings § XXI AND yet 2. This power must not be so confined to the conscience but that it may also have a secondary influence on the external actions of men to oblige them to perform such external duties upon account of conscience which they might otherwise have been unwilling to have performed of themselves For unless this Obligation of conscience have an influence on the external actions it can be of no use for the external Government we are speaking of whose Subjects are men who are not capable of being edified by our thoughts any farther than as they are signified to them by our actions and it is administred by men who cannot judg of the Observation of their own injunctions otherwise than by our external actions in order to the rewarding the obedient or punishing the disobedient and indeed for whose ends only external actions are useful as was already observed And yet they must not only be those external actions to which their own prudence would oblige them for their own intrinsick usefulness but also such wherein Subjects may differ from the judgment of their Superiors that they must be obliged in conscience to observe in order to the ends of Government For no Government whatsoever is capable of being administred by fallible Persons unless their Subjects conceive themselves obliged to submit to them even in such cases wherein they should believe them actually mistaken in point of prudence for the generality of moral affairs and especially the prudential commands of Governours are not capable of any more than probable evidence and in such cases it is very possible for such Governours to be really mistaken and for Subjects to believe them mistaken and yet if they be not observed even in such cases other instances are so very rare as that their Government it self must prove in a great measure useless and unpracticable for without a coercive power over Subjects no Government properly so called can be mainteined and there can be no coercion if Subjects be permitted to do only what they think fit themselves § XXII AND 3. These Impressions of conscience must be such as may oblige them not only to perform such external actions as otherwise they would not if they had been left to their own liberty but also to perform such actions in compliance to visible Superiors So that in order to the mainteining the Authority of this Government on their consciences it is requisite that the Authority commanding be judged to be a reason obliging them in conscience to perform whatsoever is so commanded and that these visible Superiors are to be taken for authentick Judges of their obedience or disobedience so that though they may not always be obliged to believe their Judgments concerning their own behaviour true yet they must always externally acquiesce in their determinations believing themselves obliged in conscience to give them active obedience in things lawful and passive in things that are not so For external Authority cannot be mainteined over the conscience without an obligation even in conscience to obedience and the act cannot be obedience if it be not performed for the sake of the Authority requiring it and no obedience short of this now mentioned can reach the ends of a visible external Authority And therefore it must needs be extremely vain for them to think to satisfie their consciences of their obedience by appealing from their Governours to God as the Judg of their consciences This were indeed an acknowledgment of the Authority of God if God had instituted no external Sociâ—ty of men But having done so it is plainly a refusal of their duty to their Ecclesiastical Superiors when their Authority is not admitted neither for its own sake nor as an authentick Expositor of the mind of God as the reason of their actions but the Divine Authority is appealed to independently on them and plainly a resisting of the Divine Authority as vested in them as God has required that they should be obeyed for his sake and as by leaving no remedy for Appellants in this World wherein alone it is that this Authority can be useful he has sufficiently intimated it to be his pleasure that their Authority should be unappealable here in order to the forementioned obedience § XXIII AND 4. This Authority over conscience must be such as may awe even wicked men themselves who are not altogether of a profligate and feared consâ—ience And therefore the mischief attending disobedience must be very great as it must needs be that it may by them be conceived sufficient to oversway the mischief they apprehend in wanting the gratification of their vicious appetites and very clear and unobnoxious to disputes on the acknowledged Principles of Christianity that it may be owned for such even by them who are so strongly interested and therefore prejudiced against it For wicked men are they who constitute the greatest part of all great Societies and it is principally for them that all coercive Government is settled not only that men of different Judgments but also of different affections may be necessitated to an external compliance Now in order to the establishing such a Government as this what can be more conducive or more becoming the Divine Wisdom than this Systeme of Principles on which I have been hitherto insisting § XXIV FOR it is certain 1. That they cannot oblige their Subjects thus in conscience to comply with them against their wills unless there were some benefit to their consciences to be gained by their obedience and some prejudice also to their consciences to be incurred by their disobedience Possibly some few good Subjects might be moved by the command of God and the general indefinite expectation of rewards from his good will or punishments from his displeasure as some few good Subjects would be moved by those constitutions of their Prince which were ratified by no other penalty than that of his displeasure But as in seculars this is very rarely found sufficient in experience for the Government of great Communities without specification of the immediate reward or punishment which should attend their obedience or disobedience to particular commands so it will be as necessary to observe this same method for a Government of this nature even in Spirituals For the nature of those Persons who are apt to transgress is usually so dull as not to be very apprehensive of spiritual and future inconveniences if there be not something particularly to be feared at present upon the neglect of their duty some advantage to their consciences that may even at present prove more considerable to them than the pleasure of their sins and some disadvantages of the same kind that may at present oversway the loss of their sinful pleasures and the contradiction of their appetites in such performance of their duty § XXV AND 2.