they forsake him or refuse to use him and Excommunicateth a man when they avoid his communion and declare him unmeet for communion In all which the Church useth her own right but taketh not away another mans Then for the Canonical Enquiries after faults and impositions of Penence or delays of absolution he sheweth that both the Canons and Judgments by them being but prudential Determinations of Modes and Circumstances bound none but Consenters without the Magistrates Law except as the Law of Nature bound them to avoid offences He should add and as obedience in general is due to Church-guides of Christ's appointment And how the Magistrate may constrain the Pastors to their duty Chap. 10. He sheweth that there are two perpetual Functions in the Church Presbyters and Deacons I call them Presbyters saith he with all the Ancient Church who feed the Church with the Preaching of the Word the Sacraments and the Keys which by Divine Right are individual or inseparable Note that And § 27. He saith It is doubtful whether Pastors where no Bishops are and so are under none though over none are to be numbered with Bishops or meer Presbyters § 31. His counsel for the choice of Pastors is that as in Justinian's time none be forced on the People against their wills and yet a power reserv'd in the chief Rulers to rescind such elections as are made to the destruction of Church or Commonwealth Chap. 11. § 10. He sheweth that Bishops are not by Divine precept And § 1. That therefore the different Government of the Churches that have Bishops or that have none should be no hindrance to Unity And § 10 11. That some Cities had no Bishops and some more than one And that not only in the Apostles â—ays but after one City had several Bishops in iâ—â—tation of the jews who to every Synagogue had an Archisynagogus Page 357. He sheweth that there have been at Rome and elsewhere long vacancies of the Bishops See in which the Presbyters Governed the Church without a Bishop And saith that all the Ancients do confess that there is no act so proper to a Bishop but a Presbyter may do it except the right of Ordination Yet sheweth p. 358. that Presbyters ordained with Bishops and expoundeth the Canon thus that Presbyters should Ordain none contemning the Bishop And p. 359. He sheweth that where there is no Bishop Presbyters may Ordain as Altisiodorensis saith among the Schoolmen And questioneth again whether the Presbyters that have no Bishops over them be not rather Bishops than meer Presbyters citing Ambrose's words He that had no one above him was a Bishop what would he have said of our City and Corporation Pastors that have divers Chapels and Curates under them Or of our Presidents of Synods or such as the Pastor of the first Town that ever I was Preacher in Bridgnorth in Shropshire who had six Parishes in an exempt Jurisdiction four or five of them great ones and kept Court as ordinary like the Bishops being under none but the Archbishop And § 12. He sheweth that there was great cause for many Churches to lay by Episcopacy for a time And p. 360. he saith Certainly Christ gave the Keys to be exercised by the same men to whom he gave the power of Preaching and Baptizing That which God hath joyned let no man separate But then how should Satan have used the Churches as he hath done And he sheweth of meer ruling Elders as he had done of Bishops that they are not necessary but are lawful and that it may be proved from Scripture that they are not displeasing to God and that formerly the Laity joyned in Councils Only he puts these Cautions which I consent to 1. That they be not set up as by God's command 2. That they meddle no otherwise with the Pastoral Office or Excommunication than by way of Counsel 3. That none be chosen that are unfit 4. That they use no coactive power but what is given them by the Soveraign 5. That they know their power to be mutable as being not by Gods command but from man And Chap. 11. § 8. He delivereth his opinion of the Original of Episcopacy that it was not fetcht from the Temple pattern so much as from the Synagogues where as he said before every Synagogue had a chief Ruler 14. As for J. D. and many other lesser Writers Sir Thomas Aston c. who say but half the same with those forementioned it is not worth your time and labour to read any more Animadversions on them 15. But the great Learned M. Ant. de Dominis Spalatensis deserveth a more distinct consideration who in his very learned Books De Repub. Eccles doth copiously handle all the matter of Church-Government But let us consider what it is that he maintaineth In his lib. 5. c. 1. he maintaineth that the whole proper Ecclesiastical Power is meerly Spiritual In cap. 2. that no Power with true Prefecture Jurisdiction Coaction and Domination belongeth to the Church In c. 3. he sheweth that an improper Jurisdiction belongs to it Where he overthroweth the old Schoolmens Description of Power of Jurisdiction and sheweth also the vanity of the common distinction of Power of Order and of Jurisdiction and maintaineth 1. that Power of Jurisdiction followeth ab Ordine as Light from the Sun 2. That all the Power of the Keys which is exercised for Internal effects although about External Matters of Worship or Government belongeth directly to the Potestas Ordinis 3. That the Power of Jurisdiction as distinct from Order and reserved to the Bishops is but the power about the Ordering of External things which is used Principally and Directly for an External Effect that is Church order § 5. p. 35. 4. That it is foolish to separate power of Order from any power of Jurisdiction whatsoever that is properly Ecclesiastical it being wholly Spiritual 5. The Episcopal Jurisdiction not properly Ecclesiastical he maketh to consist in ordering Rites and Ceremonies and Circumstances and Temporals about the Church and about such Modal Determinations about particular persons and actions as are matters of humane prudence which have only a General Rule in Nature or Scripture 6. By which though he hold Episcopacy Jure Divino that it is but such things that he supposeth proper to the Bishop which the Magistrate may determine and make Laws for as Grotius and others prove at last and himself after and as Sir Roger Twisden hath Historically proved to have been used by the Kings of England Histor Def. Cap. 5. 7. That all Ecclesiastical power whatsoever is fully and perfectly conjunct with Order page 36. 8. That this plenitude of power is totally and equally in all Bishops and Presbyters lawfully Ordained and that it is a meer vanity to distinguish in such power of Order Plenitudinem potestatis a parte solicitudinis 9. That this equal power of the Bishop and Presbyter floweth from Ordination and is the Essential Ordinary Ministerial
them to the Bishop he saith that he may commit it to a Presbyter For it is Mixt and hath partly the External Jurisdiction which the Bishop received by his proper Episcopal Ordination and partly yea much rather or more the Internal by the Keys which they have by virtue of their Presbyterial Ordination in equality with the Presbyters The External because it is External may therefore be delegated to another even a Lay-man which is it which the Parliament of Scotland have lately declared to be in the King And doth not all this shew what Episcopacy is Even a Magistrates Office Circa Sacra vindicated by Grotius and others But saith he they cannot delegate the inward power which is properly of the Keys because this dependeth of the Sacred Presbyterial Order both in fieri in esse in conservari operari For the Presbyterial Order hath always the Keys annexed For when any is Ordained Presbyter the Keys are given him and Jurisdiction with Orders by Divine Right And § 28. p. 474. Seeing the Apostles gave the Keys equally to all Bishops and Presbyters No man can by Divine Right reserve part of the Keys to himself alone and leave another part to others Moreover in lib. 2. c. 3. § 61. p. 210. He sheweth that Clement Linus and Anacletus were all Bishops in Rome at once Lib. 2. c. 9. § 1. p. 282. He sheweth that Bishops and Presbyters are wholly equal in all Essentials which belong to the Ecclesiastical Ministries to be exercised towards the People And that even in Government the rest of the Presbyters without excepting any in every Church make one College of which the Bishop is the Head all Ordained to the same Cure and Government of Souls So this Diocess hath between a thousand and two thousand Ministers living some of them an hundred or sixscore Miles distance to make a College to the Bishop that is usually at London How the Bishop is bound to Govern with them see him § 4. And § 5. To be plainly understood he saith We Bishops therefore must all remember that All the Presbyters are our Brethren and Collegues in the Ministry not our Servants or Slaves and that by Divine Right they have no less power in feeding the people of God than we have And if we exercise any External ampler Jurisdiction over them not properly Ecclesiastical it is not of our own power but delegated from the Magistrates power as I shall prove lib. 6. and 10. Yet plainer § 8 9. p. 285. These Parish Presbyters have by Divine Right full Power in the Ministry of Christ and in these Parishes are the Ordinary Ministers but under the Bishop For the Bishop alone hath a General Ecclesiastical Government to settle Ministers in their Diocess But being applyed to the Government of their Church they have the ordinary power but Presbyterial in that Church By positive Right only Bishops are deputed to certain Seats Yet Presbyters have so this Ordinary power that they cannot by Humane Ecclâ—siastical Right reduce it into Act till applyed by the Bishop in his Diocess And c. 9. § 11. p. 286. â— 13. p. 287. He sheweth that in Vacancies or the Bishops Absence the Clergy of Presbyters have the whole Episcopal power of Government And p. 288 289. He laboureth to prove that one Church had many Bishops and that it is but Ecclesiastical Law or Custome that one Church should have but one Bishop And § 15. That if the Canons prohibited not a Bishop might make all his Parish Presbyters full Bishops as § 16. in the Ministerial Essentials towards the Faithful they are by Divine Right equals Vid. § 20. page 291. This is enough to say of Spalatensis save that all that he saith for Bishops against us is so little a part of what is said by the rest that it can require no new Answer And if this great Moderator who returned to Rome though for a miserable imprisonment and end because we are not yet near enough to Antiquity or rather being flattered into covetous and ambitious hopes be able to prove no greater a difference between Bishops and Presbyters we need not think that any other is like to do it 16. The last great Learned Sober Defender of Episcopacy and the last that I need to mention here is Doctor Hammond who in his Annotations and his Treat of the Keys and especially his Dissertations against Blondel and his Defence of them against the London Ministers hath said much in this Cause But his way is new save that he followeth Petavius in the main supposition He forsaketh almost all the Fathers and almost all the Patrons of Episcopacy of later times who have written for it in the Exposition of all the Texts of Scripture which mention the Elders and Bishops of Churches in those times supposing that they all speak of Bishops only In his Treat of the Keys he maintaineth that the power of them was given to the Apostles onely by Christ and to Bishops as their Successors by the Apostles But I take it for undeniable truth that the Bishops and Elders settled in every Church by the Apostles in their own time had this power and I need not expect a contradiction in it And how fitly those are called the Apostles Successors whom they set over the Churches in their own time even from the beginning that they settled Churches and with whom they continued in the same Churches many Months or Years as Paul in Asia I leave to others to judge But the Question is not whether Bishops have the power of the Keys but whether all Presbyters have it not also And 1. He sheweth that according to the Canons the Presbyters might do nothing in this or in other Acts of Ministration without the Bishop 2. That our English Ordainers though they say Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins you do remit it shall be remitted c. Do not give the Presbyters all the Power of binding and loosing but so much as the Bishops or the Governours are presumed to have thought sit to impart to them which he saith is 1. The declaring in the Church the absolution of penitents after the Confession 2. The absolving them by way of prayer before the Sacrament 3. And by Baptismal washing and 4. Upon Confession to the sick and in private Conference and Confession c. Which yet he saith Is by Christs Authority committed to the Presbyters 3. He saith All this will not extend to the absolving from the bond of excommunication or proportionably to such power of binding any further at most thau to confer the first power of it which if it be then given doth yet remain as the other Power of Preaching and administring the Sacraments bound and restrained from being exercised till they be further loosed by the donation of a Second Power Ans But 1. Either he was not able or not willing to tell us whether this Power be given the Presbyters or not For he avoideth it by
made against the belief of an obligation by this Vow One is made for a change in Corporations requiring a Declaration by all in any place of Trust that there is no obligation on me or any other person from the said Oath Vow or Covenant even absolutely no obligation at all without exception of the clauses that are for the Protestant Religion for Repentance of our sins against Popery Heresie Schism Prophaneness c. The Act of Uniformity imposeth it on all Ministers c. to declare or subscribe that there is no obligation from that Vow on me or any other person to endeavour at any time any alteration of Government in the Church The Vestry Act imposeth the like on all Vestry men and so of others 4. All Ministers swear to obey the Bishops in liâ—â—tis honestis which is called the Oath of Canonical Obedience 5. And last of all an Act past at Oxford by which we are to be banished five miles from all Cities and Corporations and all places where we have preached and imprisoned six months in the Common Jail if we come nearer any of them except on the Road till we have taken an Oath that we will not at any time endeavour an alteration of the Government of the Church which plainly importeth as much objectively as the Et caetera Oath of 1640 Though not endeavouring be somewhat less than not consenting And so black a Character is put upon the Non-conformists with a some of them in the beginning of the said Act that all Reason Religion and Humanity obligeth us for the satisfaction of our Rulers for the vindication of our selves and for the just information of posterity plainly and truly to lay open our Case even those reasons for which we forbear that Conformity and by so doing incurr all this besides the greater loss of our Ministerial Liberty to labour for the saving of the peoples souls and the edifying of the Church of God What is said in the beginning may sufficiently inform the Reader 1. That it is not every man's Cause that is called a Non-conformist no nor a Presbyterian or Independant that I here maintain 2. That I am not writing a Justification of the Covenant 1. As to the Act of Imposing 2. Or of taking it 3. Nor as to the obligation of it to any thing unlawful Leaving such matters as alien to my work 3. And that I am not so rash as to assert that it obligeth any man to endeavour in his place and calling any change of our Church Government no not of a Lay-Chancellor's use of the Keys whatever I think Because it is made a matter of so grievous penalty by an Act. All that I have to do is to enquire whether the Diocesane Prelacy as now stated be so lawful that we may take all these Oaths and Subscriptions to it and so necessary that the King and Parliament have no power to change it or make an alteration if they please and we endeavour it by obeying them if they should command us And I go upon such Principles as Doctor Burges Master Gataker and many others in the Assembly that were ready to protest that they were not against the Primitive Episcopacy no nor a moderate one that did not in all things reach it I will rather be guilty of Repetition than of leaving the rash or heedless under a pretext for their mistake or calumny My own judgment is as followeth 1. That every particular Church consisting of as full a number as can associate for true personal Communion in Worship and holy living should be guided by as many Pastors or Elders of the same Office as the number of souls and the work requireth 2. That it is lawful if not usually laudable and fit if these Presbyters consent that one among them who is wiser and fitter than the rest be statedly their Guide Director or Moderator in the matters of Doctrine Worship and Discipline in that Church for order and concord and for the peoples sakes and their own And especially that in Ordinations they do nothing without him 3. That these particular Churches with their Bishop and Presbytery are Independant so far that no other Bishop or Church hath a Divine Right to Govern them saving what is anon to be said of General Pastors or Visiiters and the power of each Minister in the Universal Church as he is called 4. That as to the Communion of several Churches among themselves these particular Churches are not Independent but must hold Concord and Correspondency by Letters Messengers or Synods as there shall be cause 5. That in these Synods it is lawful and orderly oftentimes to make some one the Moderator or Guide of their debates And that either pro tempore or quamdiu sit maxime idoneus or durante vita as true Prudence shall discern it to be most conducible to the end 6. That where the Churches Good and the calling of the Infidel World requireth it there should be itinerant Ministers like the old Evangelists Silas Apollo Timothy Titus c. to preach the Gospel and gather Churches and help their Pastors And if such be not necessary in any place yet the fixed Pastors should when there is cause be itinerant and help to convert the Infidels and Hereticks and do both the general and particular work 7. That the judgment of Antiquity moving me much but more the Argument from the necessity that the same form of Government be continued in its ordinary parts which Christ at first setled in the Apostles and is not proved repealed do move me to incline to think that the Apostles must have such Successors as general Planters and Overseers of many Churches And who should before all particular Bishops have a chief hand in the ordaining of particular Bishops and Pastors and removing them as the Churches good requireth As the Seniors have in the Bohemian Waldenses Government And though I am yet in doubt my self whether such general Ministers or Arch-bishops be jure divino of Christs institution I do not deny it or contend against it And though I would not assert or swear to their right I would obey them 8. That all this Church-power is to be exercised only by Gods word managed by convincing Reason Love and good Example and that no Bishops or Arch-bishops have any power of Corporal Coaction Nor should give Church Communion to any but Voluntary Consenters nor should mix and corrupt the exercise of the Keys with unseasonable interpositions of the Sword even in the Magistrates own hand 9. But yet that the King and Magistrates are the Rulers by the Sword over all Pastors and their Flocks to see that all men do their duties and to regulate them by Laws about holy things subserviently to the Kingdom and Laws of Christ and in consistence with the preservation of the Office of the Ministry and real liberties of the Flocks 10. And therefore though we think Churchmen usually very unfit for any Magistratical Power yet we
them go without Christianity rather than Baptize them without this Image of a Cross unless he will be suspended from preaching Christs Gospel to the ignorant that they may be saved But if he will bear that he may do what he will that so poor souls may be the losers 19. If the commonest whore or wicked woman come to be Churched as they call it after child-bearing the Priest must use all the Office of thanksgiving without first expecting her repentance as if she were the chastest person And must give her the Sacrament 20. To conclude no Priest as such till Licensed hath power to take upon them to expound in his own Cure or elsewhere and therefore not to his family or any one of his ignorant neighbours any Scripture or matter or Doctrine But shall only study to Read plainly and aptly without glossing or adding the Homilies c. Are these Authorized Priests that may not so much as tell a Child the meaning of his Catechism or any Article of the Faith No though an ignorant person ask him The Priests lips should preserve knowledge and the Law should be enquired of at his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts But an English Priest may not expound any Matter Scripture or Doctrine but barely Read till the Bishop License him Obj. If they be not able it will do more harm than good Answ Will the righteous God be always mocked and suffer men to make merchandice of Souls and to vilifie them and set them at cheaper rates than they would do a goose a pig or a dog Is this a fit answer for those that are their Ordainers under whose examination and hands all men enter into the Ministery Will they say that they can get no better What not when they have made so many Canonical Engines to keep out better What not when such as Cartwright Hildersham Amesius Parker Dod Ball c. are cast out as unworthy When so many hundred were silenced in Queen Elizabeth and King James's days and Eighteen Hundred of us now When the Bishops have got so many Laws to hinder us from Preaching in publick and private and to banish us five miles from all Cities Corporations and places where we have preached When none but their sworn Curates Subscribers Declarers c. may preach yet can they get no better Will they keep up a Ministry whom they will themselves so ignominiously stigmatize as to tell the world that none of them all as Presbyters may be endured to expound any Scripture Doctrine or Matter but barely to Read Yea as if they would disswade them from all Learning of Humanity or Divinity as needless or hurtful things they say he shall only study to Read plainly and aptly So that he that studieth for any more than to Read doth break the Canons of the Prelatical Church Also a Priest as such hath no power to judge what Garments he shall wear nor of what colour at home or abroad He hath no power to judge in what house he may instruct or pray with any of his flock nor when so much as with his Church in publick or with any sick or afflicted neighbour in private to Fast and Pray But they are all straitly forbidden to preach or administer the Sacraments except to the sick in private houses To preach or officiate in any room save a Consecrated Chappel even in a Noblemans house To keep publick or private fasts To give the Sacrament to any that are not of their own Parish at least if they go from their own Priest because he never studied more than to Read They have not power to admit any other how Learned and Holy soever to preach in their Churches as Presbyters without Licence All these shew their Priestly power Obj. But a Surrogate may Excommunicate Answ 1. That is but ludicrous pro forma 2. Or else it is but their self-condemnations while they allow one Presbyter of a thousand to do that which all the rest are forbidden The same I say of Arch-deacons and peculiar Ordinaries Object They make Canons in Convocations and choose Convocation Priests Answ 1. It is but two Priests of many hundred that are in a Convocation And what 's that to all the rest 2. Choosing is not a Governing act Where the people choose Kings and Parliament men it proveth not that they have any Government themselves The Laity ever formerly chose their Bishops and yet were no Bishops nor Church Rulers 3. It is in the Bishops power to frustrate their choice For when they have chosen four he may put by two of them In this great Convocation which hath new moulded our Liturgy which hath formed the Engines that have done what is done the great and famous City of London had not one chosen Clerk in the Convocation No wonder then if they Conform not as not being bound by their own Consent For when they chose Mr. Calamy and my self the Bishop refused us both which I am so far from mentioning in discontent that I take it to have been a greater Mercy than I can well express 4. I take not Canon-making to be any considerable part of the Pastoral Office If two of many hundred have power to please the Plural Number of Prelates Deans and other Dignitaries whom they cannot over-vote by serving them against the Church and their Brethren doth that prove that Presbyters as such have the Governing power of their flocks I am not striving for a power of Ruling one another much less of Excommunicating Kings and Magistrates nor a power of making Laws or Ruling Neighbour Churches But only a power of Guiding their own flocks and judging of their own actions Yea and that not as Ungoverned or without Appeals But as Ruled by Magistrates consociated for Concord with other Pastors and Ruling Volunteers And if Archbishops also Rule them by Gods Laws we shall submit CHAP. XVII That the great change of Government hitherto described the making of new species of Churches a new Episcopacy and a new sort of half-sub-presbyters with the Deposition of the old was sinfully done and not according to the intent of the Apostles THere are two pretences and no more that I know of made to justifie all this foredescribed change The first is by Dr. Hammond when he was hard put to it at last in answer to the London Ministers which is That Subpresbyters were Ordained in Saint John's time and therefore by him The second is ordinary that though de facto the Apostles setled but single Pastors without Sub-presbyters at least over single Churches or Assemblies yet this was not done with an Obligatory purpose for the so fixing of it But only de facto pro tempore as a State of immaturity with a purpose and intent that it should grow up to the change of this at maturity I. To the first Pretence I answer 1. What probability is there that one Apostle when all the rest were dead should make so great a
askt whether the King and Parliament had not power to set up a Bishop in every Corporation and to take down Deans Arch-Deacons Chancellours Officials c. and sew denied it 5. I askt my self iâ— the King and Parliament make such a change and command my Consent whether I must disobey them and forestall my obedience by a Covenant and Oath 6. I thought that what is imposed on all the Clergie to day may be imposed on the Laity next And then all Parliament men will be Sworn and Covenanted never in Parliament so much as to Consent to change any of the Church Government now established 7. I found that I must also swear That it ought so to stand which could mean no less than by a Divine Law when Mans Law may not alter it 8. I found such Heartiness Willingness required in the Swearer as required very full satisfaction in all this And that with the terrible re-nuncication of the Help of God in Christ if I do not all that I swear to 9. And I must be deprived of my Office for Benefice I had none and cast out of the ministry if I refused to take this Episcopal Covenant and Oath 10. And I knew that he that made no Conscience of deliberate Perjury had little reason to hope that he had any good Conscience true Grace or Honesty and specially if he concurred to involve all the Clergie or Nation in the guilt Upon these Considerations I set my self to a more searching study of the matter I read Gersom Bucer Didoclaue Jacob and after Parker Bains and others on one side and all that I could get on the other Downam again Bilson Hooker Saravia Andrews and many more And the result of my search was this I wondered to find so many write for and against Episcopacy without distinguishing the sorts of Episcopacy For I found reason to think one sort at least Tolerable yea desirable but that which the Oath of 1640. would have bound me to I found great reason to judge to be but what I have described it in this Book And I here give notice to the Reader that whereever he findeth me speak as against the English Diocesane Prelacy I mean it as described by Cousins and Dr. Zouch and as relating to that Oath and Canon and not in opposition to the Laws of the Land This Judgment then setled I never could see cause to change but the more I read of the Ancients Church History Counsels c. And many other Writers for Episcopacie Petavius Sancta Clara Spalatensis Dr. Hamond and many more the more was I confirmed in it to this day When Usurpation was at the highest I wrote accordingly in my book called Disputations of Church Government When the King came home I accordingly used my Endeavours as a Reconciler with the Ministers here called Presbyterians who seemed mostly of the same mind And how little an alteration of the Church Government in the Kings Declaration of Ecclesiastical Affairs did we receive with thankfulness and it would have been with a conforming joy but that we knew the leading Men that treated with us too well to hope that they had any intention to continue it but to use it they knew to what till they had done their work and got this Act of Uniformity In 1668. After I had been in the Goal and yet men called for the reasons of my Nonconformity I drew up some of my thoughts rudely And in 1671. The call being renewed I wrote this Book as now it is saving a few additional Notes But cast it by my Friends and my experience perswading me that the Bishops and their Parliament adherence could not patiently bear it Many years after some Letters past between Mr. Henry Dodwell then of Ireland and me And his last being tedious and he seeming not to intend or desire a publication of them I gave him but a short general return instead of a voluminous particular Answer especially because I had this Book written by me in which I had more than answered him and was not willing or at leasure to write over the same things again But when I had lately wrote in my Book of Concord a summary consutation of Mr. Dodwels schismatical Volumne in which he degradeth unchurcheth if not unchristeneth so many of the Protestants as having no Sacraments no Covenant right to Salvation but sinning against the Holy-Ghost and all for want of a Ministery derived by an uninterrupted succession of Episcopal Ordination from the Apostles and could not by importunity prevaile with him to answer Voetius de desperata causa Papatus or my Dispute of Ordination at last I received a Letter from him signifying his purpose upon his Friends desire to Publish his long Letter written to me out of Ireland So that I saw a necessity of Publishing my Treatise which contained more than an Answer to him And the rather because some R. Reverend Bishops and others had urged me to give an Account of the Reasons of my Non-conformity So that I had not leave to suppress this book nor be longer silent And yet I fear that they that so called for it will not easily bear it The summe of Mr. Dodwels Letter to me now in the press is to prove the possibility of right Discipline by our Diocesane Goverment as it is 1. Because Magistrates can exercise theirs by as few 2. Because the Ancients de facto did it by such Therefore it may be done To answer these two is to answer his Letter which one would think should be so easy that no Scholar should have need of help to do it 1. If any man canby an harrangue of words be brought to renounce his reason and experience so far as to believe that the Office of a Pastor may be performed to as many Parishes as the Office of a Major or Justice of Peace may and that Pastors have no more to do in watching over particular Souls instructing exhorting convincing comforting visiting worpshing Governing c than the works of a Justice of Peace amount to and that Dr. Stillingfleet e. g. shall be excused if he do no more for his Parish than Justice Rog. L'Estrange doth I undertake not to convince that man of any thing Read over the work of a Bishop as I have here discribed it from the Scripture and Dr. Hamond and compare it with a Justices work and if you can yet be deceived by Mr. Dodwel be deceived And yet I think there are in divers Parishes about us many Justices for one Pastor I am confident London Diocess hath a great number for one Bishop And either our Justices are bound besides what now they doe to labour as much to bring some to Repentance and such other work as the Pastors are bound to do or not If not it will not follow that as large a Circuit may be Governed by one Pastor as by one Justice If yea then he doth but condemne the Justices for unfaithfulness which will not prove that a
Pastor be ready to give an account of his Ministry and to answer any thing that shall be alledged against him And that the vote of the Synod obligeth all against unnecessary singularity 10. We refuse not that one in every such Synod be the moderator and if as of old every City 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Corporation had a Bishop so if but every Corporation or market Town or every circuit that hath as many Communicanâ—â— as can know one another by neighbourhood and some conversation and sometimes assembling like a great Parish with many Chappels had but so much power as is essential to a true particular Pastor and Church yea or but the power that a free Tutor Philosopher or Physician hath to manage his office by his skill and not as an Apothecary or meer executor of a strangers dictates we should quietly submit 11. And as we refuse not such Bishops even durante vita capacitate in every Church or City that is Corporation so if it please either the King or the Churches by his permission to give one grave and able man a general care of many Churches as even the Scots superintendents had at their reformation as Spotswood of Lothian c. not by violence to silence and oppress but by meer Pastoral power and only such as the Apostles themselves used to instruct junior Pastors to reprove admonish c. we resist not And so if Godly Diocesans will become Arch-bishops only of this sort and promote oâ—r work instead of hindering it we shall submit though we cannot Swear approbation it being a thing that Christian Ministers may doubt of and no Article of our Creed 12. And if the King do cumulate wealth and honour on them and give them their place in Parliaments to keep the Clergy from contempt yea or trust any of them under him as Magistrates with the Sword whether we like it or not we shall peaceably submit and obey them as Magistrates 13. And if for order sake these Diocesans should have a negative voice unless in cases of forfeiture or necessity in the ordination of Ministers to the Church universal not taking away the power of particular Churches to choose or at least freely consent or dissent as to the fixing of Pastors over themselves we would submit to all this for common peace Specially if the Magistrate only choose men to Benefices and Magistracies and none had the Pastoral power of the Keyes but by the Election of the Clergy and the peoples consent which was the judgment and practice of the universal Church from the beginning of Episcopacy till of late 14. And lastly we hold the Magistrate the only Governour by the Sword as well of Pastors as of Physicians and all others And though he may not take the work of our proper calling out of our hands no more than the Physicians yet he may by justice and discretion punish us for male-administration and drive us to our duty though not hinder us from it And we consent to do all under his Government Judge now whether we set up Popes or Tyrants By all this it is apparent that it is none of the designe of this Treatise to overthrow or weaken the Church of England but to strengthen and secure it against all its notorious dangers 1. By reforming those things which else undoubtedly will cause a succession of dissenters in all generations though all we the present Nonconformists are quickly like to be past troubling them or being troubled by them even of themselves many will turne upon the same reasons which have convinced us 2. By uniting all Protestants and turning their odious wrath and contentions into a reverence of their Pastors and into mutual Love and help This Treatise being hastened in three presses since Mr. Dodwel sent me his Letter that required it I have not time to gather the Printers Errata but must leave them to the discretion of the Reader Only for English Prelacy before the first Chapter and in many other places should be The described Prelacy I will end with the two following Testimonies One ad rem the other ad hominem The Lord pity his Ship that is endangered by the Pilots October 14. 1680 Richard Baxter Justin Martyr's Apolog. We had rather die for the confession of one Faith then either lie or deceive them that examine us Otherwise we might readily use that Common saying my Tongue is sworn my mind is unsworn vid. Rob. Abbot old way p. 51. Thorndike of forbearance of Penalties It is to no purpose to talk of reformation in the Church unto regular Government without restoring the Liberty of choosing Bishops and the Priviledge of Injoying them to the Synods Clergy and people of each Diocess So evident is the right of Synods Clergy and people in the making of this of whom they consist and by whom they are to be governed that I need make no other reason of the neglect of Episcopacy than the neglect of it THE CONTENTS PART I. Chap. 1. THe Reasons of this Writing Chap. 2. The English Diocesane Prelacy and Church Government truly described that it may be known what it is which we dissent from Chap. 3. Our judgement if the History of the ancient Church Government and of the rise of the Diocesane Prelacy Chap. 4. The judgement of those Non Conformists now silenced who 1660 addressed themselves to King Charles II. for the matter in Church-Government What they then offered and what those of the Authers mind now hold as to the Right of what is before but Historically related Chap. 5. Concerning the several Writers on this Controversie wherein there are sufficient animadversions on some and sufficient Confutations of the Cheif who have written for the Prelacy which we dissent from As 1. Whitgift 2. Faravia 3. Bilson 4. Hooker 5. Bishop Downams Defence 6. Bishop Hall 7. Petavius 8. Bish Andrews 9 Bish Usher in some passages 10. Of the Dispute at the Isle of Wight 11. John Forbes 12. The two Books of the Bohemian Discipline consented to 13. Grotius applauded 14. J. D. 15. M A. de Dom. Spalatensis considered and much of him approved 16. Doctor Hammond answered viz. his Annotations his Dissertat against Blondel c. who have written against Prelacy Chap. 6. It is not pleasing to God that Cities only should have Bishops and Churches with the Territories Chap. 7. The Definition and Reasons of a Diocesan Church considered and confuted Chap. 8. Whether the Infidel Territories or Citizens are part of a Diocesane Church Chap. 9. Whether converting a Diocess give right to their Converter to be their Bishop and Ruler Chap. 10. That a particular Church of the first or lowest order must consist of neighbour Christians associated for personal Communion in local presence in holy worship and Conversation and not of Strangers so remote as have only an internal heart Communion or an external Communion by the Mediation of others Chap. 11. That a Bishop or Pastor of a Particular Church
Bishop and his Chancellor and other Officers are over us all The Magistrates Civil Governmeut of the Church I shall not meddle with as having no exceptions against it The Sacerdotal or Spiritual Power called the Power of the Keys determineth who shall be Members of the Church and partake of its Communion and exerciseth other acts of Spiritual Discipline of which more anon This power is said to be in Archbishops and Bishops in foro ecclesiae publico vel exteriore though also in the Governed Presbyters in foro privato interiore as they may privately comfort a penitent person and declare God's promise of the pardon of his sin The Archbishops have it in eminency As also the power of confirming the Election of the Bishops of their Provinces and the power of Consecrating Bishops with two others and the power of Convocating Provincial Synods upon the Kings Prescript and of moderating in them The power of receiving Appeals and of Visiting the whole Provinces yea to receive Appeals from the lower Judges omiting the middle ones and to exercise Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in any vacant Diocess under them They have power of Dispensation in all Causes not judged contrary to Gods word wherever the Pope had power and where the Pope had not power if the King or Council permit it them They may dispense with the Eating of flesh on Fasting-days with Marrying without previous publication with divers irregularities and sometime may abolish simoniacum ambitum They may grant Commendams and Dispence with Non-residence and with the keeping of divers Churches called Benefices in several Cases and with a Sons succeeding his Father and with Lay-mens possessing the Church-maintenance called Prebends The Bishops who take place in Parliament of other Barons as the Archbishops do of Dukes are all chosen really by the King who nominateth in a Writ to the Dean and Chapter the man whom they must chuse who pro forma do chuse him never contradicting the Kings Nomination Their proper Office consisteth in the powers of Order and of Jurisdiction as they distinguish them Their power of Order is threefold 1. To Ordain Priests and Deacons 2. To Consecrate Churches and Burying places 3. To Confirm Children after Baptism when they can speak and say the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue and others that were not Confirmed in their Childhood Besides that they may be Privy-Counsellors Lord-Keepers of the Great Seal Lord Treasurers Embassadours c. Their ordinary Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction extendeth 1. to the Interdiction of Divine Offices 2. to publick Admonitions and Penances 3. to suspension from the Sacrament and from ingress into the Church and 4. to Excommunication and Absolution and 5. to Anathematisms And as to Ministers 1. They may Sequester Benefices 2. They may Suspend ab officio beneficio and forbid them to Preach or Pray Or grant License to such as shall be tolerated to Preach 3. They may deprive 4. And depose Ministers by sentence verbal and degradation actually This Church Jurisdiction of Bishops is distinguished into Voluntary and Contentious The Voluntary extendeth to abundance of things granted them by Statute and by Common Law which I pass by That which they claim both by Municipal Law and Ecclesiastical is 1. The probate of the Testaments of the dead 2. The granting Administration of Goods to the next of Kin 3. Keeping the bona caduca where none claimeth the Inheritance 4. To receive Reasons of Administring and to be Judges of them 5. To confer Benefices or Institute such as others present 6. To grant Induction to the Instituted 7. To receive the Fruits of vacant Benefices 8. To allow the Vicar a fit proportion 9. To grant Letters Dimissory or Testimonial 10. To Visit their Diocess once in three years In which Triennial Visitation they usually go to one Town in a County and never see the face of the people in the many score or hundred Churches about them and thither they summon the Ministers and the Church-Wardens and Sides-men Where one Minister preacheth and then the Ministers must dine with the Bishop and in Court he or his Officer giveth a Book of Printed Articles containing a multitude of particulars which the Church-warden must swear to present by where because of the quality of them some Church-Wardens refuse and others because of the number some saying it is unlawful to undo their Ministers and Neighbours by such Presentments as for omitting a Ceremony for preaching or keeping a Fast in private c. and some saying it is impossible to keep the Oath and some saying that if they do it they shall be hated of their Neighbours Whereupon those that refuse are prosecuted to punishment And the rest take the Oath and Articles but not one of many doth present accordingly though the Canon enquires after the perjured And many that fear perjury or persecution themselves do hire some poor man to be Church-Warden in their stead that will venture upon all I must intreat the Reader to peruse some of their Books of Articles especially such as Bishop Mountagues and Bishop Wrens to see what was then enquired after Dr. Zouch de Jud. Eccless p. 37. § 1. Part. 3. saith Ad judices quod attinet statuto ordinatum quod personae conjugatae dummodo Doctores Juris Civilis fuerint qui ad officium Cancellarii Vicarii Generalis Officialis vel Commissarii à Majestate Regia Archiapiscopo Episcopo Archidiacono aut alio quocunque potestatem habente deputati sunt omnem Jurisdictionem Ecclesiasticam exercere quam libet censuram sive coercitionem â—rrogare possint This Jurisdiction of Bishops is exercised either Universally by a Vicar General usually a Lay-man or qarticularly by a Commissary And when he please the Bishop may do it himself The other part of their Jurisdiction is called Contentious And here the Bishop may himself judge in some Cases but in the ordinary course of Jurisdiction a Civil Lawyer called his Chancellor is the Judge This Chancellor is and must be a Lay-man which even Bishop Goodman of Gloucester Myst Rel. Epist I have it and can produce it at this time under the Kings own Hand and Seal wherein he forbids that any Church-man or Priest in Holy Orders be a Chancellor and this was the occasion of all the corruption of the Spiritual Courts For Chancellors live only on the Fees of the Court and for them to dismiss a Cause it was to lose so much blood See further in him a Papist Bishop of a Protestant Diocess complaineth in Print that he could not get Reformed This Chancellor keepeth an Ordinary Court in the form of a Civil Court where are Advocates for Council and Proctors for pleading Certain men called Apparitors whose name is commonly a scorn among the people do from abroad the Country bring them in Accusations and Summon the persons accused besides those that by Plaintiffs are accused Here are judged Causes about Church Materials and Causes Criminal which he that
readeth the whole Book of Canons and the Visitation Articles may see they being too many for me to recite Besides a multitude of Cases about Marriages to be contracted dissolved separation and Testaments and the Goods of Intestate persons Priests Deacons and Lay-men are judged in these Courts The final constraining penalty is Excommunication or before that Suspension and other degrees of Church punishment before mentioned as belonging to the Bishop The supposed offenders are no otherwise dealt with to bring them to true Repentance than as in Civil Courts by other Lay-Judges They that appear not and they that pay not the Fees of the Court and Officers are Excommunicate and they that obey not the Orders of the Court. In Excommunications and Absolutions the Lay-Chancellor is Judg but he writeth the Decree in the Bishops name And at least sometimes pro formâ some Priest or other is procured to be present no Bishop to utter the Sentence which the Lay Judge Decreeth This Sentence is sent by the Chancellor to the Minister of the Parish where the offender liveth who must publish it in the Church openly as the Cryer doth the Kings Proclamation But if it be the Minister himself that is Excommunicated another Minister readeth it The whole process of their Judicial Tryals Sentences and Executions you may see in Cosin's Tab. 9. 10. Besides the Chancellor's Courts called the Bishops the Archdeacons have certain inferiour Courts where they enquire after faults and return the great ones to the Bishops Courts And they Induct or give possession of Benefices As for the Parish Priests or Ministers ordinary Parishes have but one to each but Great Parishes cannot be served as they call it without a Curate and each Chapel hath a Curate but all under One that hath the sole possession of the Benefice whether he be Parson or Vicar These Priests are Ordained by the Bishop some one two or three Presbyters if present also imposing hands They are chosen to the Church and Benefice by the Patron who presents them to the Bishop who giveth them Institution for Title and Induction for possession When he is Ordained Instituted and Inducted he must not Preach to his People till he hath got a License from the Bishop of that Diocess no though he were before Licensed in another Diocess Nor must he Preach or Officiate or have any Benefice or Church till he have subscribed and done as is expressed in the Act of Uniformity And he must declare his Assent and Consent to all things contained in and prescribed by three Books the Liturgy the Book of Ordination and the Articles And he must swear obedience to his Bishop His Office is when after Licensed to Preach to Read the Scriptures and the Apocrypha and many Acts of Parliament and Homilies to read the Liturgy or Prayers To give notice of Holy-days and Fasting-days To Baptize all Children without exception that are offered him by Godfathers and Godmothers the Parents not Covenanting for them but others To Marry persons To Church Women after Child bearing To hear Children in Church say the Catechism that is in the Liturgy but many have been forbidden by the Bishops to expound it or tell the Children the meaning of the words which they say by rote To celebrate and give the Sacrament to the Parishioners To visit the Sick and absolve them if they say they repent To bury the Dead affirming of them all that God in mercy hath taken their souls as our dear brethren to himself excepting only 1. Those that die unbaptized though Children of Princes or godly Parents 2. Those that are Excommunicate usually such as durst not Conform to them 3. And those that kill themselves though in a Frensie To use the Cross Surplice and other Ceremonies of the Church And to joyn with the Church-Wardens if they please in presenting such to the Bishops Courts as break their Laws And if he deny any notorious offender the Sacrament he must become his Accuser before the Chancellour or Bishops Court This is the Office of a Parish Priest Where you must note 1. in general that he hath no Judicial Administration in the Church They ordinarily say that he hath no Jurisdiction but meer Priestly Orders As if they knew not that Priestly Order is nothing but the Sacred Office and that that Office is the Power of the Keys or essentially containeth the Power of Guiding the Flock in Teaching Worship and Discipline under Christ the Chief Prophet Priest and King Civil Jurisdiction over the Church is the Kings and Spiritual is part of the Priestly Office or Order as to the subject people to be governed 2. Particularly note 1. that the Minister hath in England no power to Judge whom to Baptize and whom not but must Baptize all that are offered though the Children of Jews Infidels Turks Apostates 2. That he hath no power to hinder the admission of any so baptized into the state of adult Members by the Bishops Confirmation For though it be said Children shall bring his Certificate that they can say the Catechism yet 1. those Children may go without it and do ordinarily When I was confirmed my self none was required nor did I ever see any given 2. And if it were the poor Children seldom understand any thing that they say or much 3. There is not one of multitudes in our Churches that ever sought or minded such Confirmation because of its abuse 3. That he hath no power to hinder any confirmed or adult persons from the Sacraments on the account of the grossest ignorance or infidelity when multitudes among us know not what the Sacrament is nor know the essentials of the Christian Faith 4. He hath no power to convent any open offender before him to call him to repentance They may chuse to come to him or to open their doors to him or speak to him if he come to them 5. He hath no power to call them to Repentance openly before the Church or pray by name for their Repentance or admonish them 6. He hath no power to judge any person to be Excommunicate 7. Nor to absolve any that is penitent after Excommunication But only to read the Lay-Chancellours sentences sent him in the Bishops name 8. He hath no power to forbear giving the Lords Supper to any one how notorious an offender soever unless he will prosecute him at the Bishops Court nor then but for once So that if he pay his Fees and be Absolved there though the Minister know him to be never so bad he must give the Sacrament the next time And the prosecution is so odious and fruitless that I never knew any do it except against the Nonconformists 9. He that seeth never so great signs of Impenitency in any man that is sick or will but say that he is sick hath no power to deny him private Absolution and the Sacrament if he do but say I Repent 10. He hath no power to
Chancellors did only these accidental works or Lay Elder either and meddled not with the sacred power of the Keys we should not be so quarrelsome as to condemn their undertaking unless it were for the abuse 47. We doubt not but in a Church that hath many Pastors those that are young and weak should much submit to the elder and more able and be as far ruled by them as the difference of age experience and abilities without a difference of Office doth require 48. And we doubt not but where Temples and Church-maintenance are at the dispose of Patrons People or Magistrates they may give them to some one Pastor as the present possessor so that no other shall have part but by his concession And this difference there is between the Parson and his Curates in our Parishes and an accidental superiority and inferiority thereby without a difference of Office 49. If Magistrates or Councils or Custome should in each particular Church that hath many Pastors give one a Governing that is a negative voice among the rest in the management of the affairs of that Church so that the rest should not go against him or without him as Archbishops now are over Bishops and Archpresbyters were formerly over Presbyters and Archdeacons over Deacons and Presidents over Colleges and Courts of Justice without claiming a distinct Office though the sad experience of Mens inclination to Church-tyranny make us doubtful whether we should wish for such an inequality yet would we not unpeaceably disturb or quarrel with such an Order when it is settled Our Parish Order aforesaid being indeed but such 50. Whether God himself hath appointed another sort of Bishops who may be better called Archbishops as Successors of the Apostles in the Ruling part of their Office and whether these have not a Power above particular Church Pastors in Ordinations and in the oversight of the Pastors themselves and in the Care of many Churches I have long ago confessed is a Case of too much difficulty for me to determine On the one side though the Apostles have no Successors in the extraordinary and temporary part of their Office yet Church-government being an ordinary and permanent part as doctrine is I can hardly think that when we find one Form of Church-government instituted by Christ himself and continuing till the end of that Age that we should presume to say that this Form then ceased and another must succeed it without good proof What we find enacted and setled must stand till we can prove it abrogate And unless it were a thing which in the nature of it were temporary it seemeth a harsh imputation of mutability to feign Christ to set up a Church-government which should be in force but for an hundred years And on the other side it puzleth me 1. to find it so hard to prove that the Apostles themselves did indeed exercise any Office power over other Pastors which one may not do towards another over and above that which accrewed to them from the meer extraordinary advantage of their gifts and Apostolical proper work 2. And to find it so obscure whether they settled any as their Successors in that superiority of power which they had 51. But being in such doubt and being uncertain whether such Arch-Bishops or Apostolical Successors in the points of Ordination and oversight of many Churches be of Divine right or not I resolve not to contend against any such Order nor to disobey any just commands of such nor to reproach the custome of the Churches 52. And though I know that Pastors should not unnecessarily be diverted by any aliene works yet if it please the Magistrate to commit some of his power of Church-government by the Sword about things extrinsick to the Pastoral Office into the hands of some Ministers as his Officers and if he call them Bishops and command us to obey them and if he make them Barons and endow them with Lordships and great revenues though I see the great peril to the Church from hence by reason of mens pride and worldliness yet will I not reproach this Order nor deny any just obedience to any such Officers of the King 53. If any acknowledging the Pastors of each Church to have the whole Pastoral Office and power of the Keys of that Church which he overseeth shall yet affirm that the aforesaid superiour General Bishops or Arch-Bishops have a superiour power of the Keys and therefore shall have the decision of controversies that arise in particular Churches between the Pastors and the People and that appeals may be made by the people to them and that they may visit the particular Churches at their pleasure and have power to censure the particular Bishops or Pastors when they deserve it or to Ordain Ministers remove them and depose them as there is just cause by bare sentence and the peoples consent and all this jure divino as Successors to the Apostles in their Government or to such Archbishops or General Bishops as Timothy and Titus I shall not contend against any of this for the reasons aforesaid being uncertain of the thing in question But if I must be put to subscribe that I believe all this to be true as if it were an Article of my Faith the same uncertainty would forbid me 54. And here I must take occasion to say that I take unnecessary Subscriptions Declarations Promises and Oaths to be one of the chiefest of the Devil's Engines to divide Christ's Churches and to fish out those Ministers that make conscience of perjury and lying and to turn them out of the work of Christ and to leave in those that do not when Conscience can find but any shifting pretence And how fit such are for the Sacred Ministry and whose servants really they are and how they are like to do Christ's work and what a Case the Churches will be in that have such and what the effects will be with the common people and how the lovers of Godliness will resent all this and what else will follow hereupon I leave to the Reader that hath the brains of a man or ever opened his eyes to mark what is done abroad in the World or that ever read with observation the things that in other Ages have befallen the Churches or that knoweth what relation light hath to darkness good to evil and Christ to Belial I think that the Articles of our Faith and the matters of our practice are so to be distinguished as that there is a necessity of Believing the former and therefore we may be called to profess that we do Believe them And for the other the Agenda we must be called to Do them and if they be plain and necessary duties of our Religion being to be Believed to be Duties before we do them we may sometime be put to profess that Belief But duties of humane imposition or of doubtful nature may be done as things lawful by thousands of peaceable men that cannot say or
Soveraign but Christ 79. By all this it is evident that we grant all these following disparities in the Church 1. The disparity of Age standing and Gifts among Ministers of the same Order 2. A kind of paternal priority where one was the Teacher Educater or Ordainer of the other 3. An accidental disparity when one only by the Patron or Magistrate hath the sole possession of the Maintenance and power of the Temple 4. We will not unpeaceably contend against the guiding power or negative Vote of One Bishop in a particular Church over the rest of the Pastors of the same Office Nor do we take such a power to make a distinct Office 5. We do not strive against the Presidency of one in Synods as Moderator No though it were durante vitâ which Bishop Hall thought would serve to heal us 6. We do not deny Obedience to any Bishop who is Commissioned by the King to exercise as a Church-Magistrate his part of the Church-Government 7. Much less do we strive against the Power of Kings and Lawful Magistrates Circa Sacra of which Grotius hath excellently written de Imper. But we take the Magistrate to be the necessary and only Ruler by the Sword to keep Peace and Order among Church men as well as among men of all other Professions 8. Yea I do not contend against the Divine Right of General Bishops or Archbishops such as Timothy and Titus nor will deny Obedience to them who take care as Visitors of Many Churches which have every one their proper Bishop one or more with true plenary Pastoral power of the Keys to guide the people of their charge 9. We refuse not to receive Ordination from such General Bishops 10. Nor do we refuse to be responsible to them when we are accused of any male Administration or to admit of Appeals from us to them 80. By all which it appeareth 1. How falsly we are charged to be against all Episcopacy 2. And how falsly and deceitfully all those Writers state the Case and plead against us that only plead for a Congregational or Parochial Episcopacy or any of this which we grant and how they cheat their Readers who make them believe that our Controversie is whether there should be any Episcopacy and not what kind of Episcopacy it should be 3. What friends they will prove to the Church that will rather do all that is done against it than endure those that grant all this which we do grant them 81. That I am not singular in all this I prove in that it was only Archbishop Usher's Reduction of Episcopacy to the Primitive state which the Nonconformists malitiously called Presbyterians did offer to his Majesty and the Bishops 1660. as the means of our Concord and which was rejected Yea that they thankfully accepted though not totally approved that higher Model expressed in his Majesties Declaration about Ecclesiastical Affairs And now I suppose I have given Strangers and Posterity a truer Description of the Judgment of the present Nonconformists than malicious turbulent ambitious Persons use to give of them or than the extreams and freaks of a few Sectaries would allow men to receive CHAP. V. Concerning the Writers of this Controversie With a Summary Answer to the Chief that write against the Cause which I defend I Have not been altogether negligent to read the Controversies on this Subject nor I hope partial in Reading them If I have it hath been because I had rather have found Conformity to the Prelacy to be lawful for then I had not above nine years been silenced and denied not only all Church maintenance but leave to preach Christ's Gospel nor had I been exposed as I have been to so much wrath and malice expressed in so many scurrilous lying invectives and libells besides other ways Even when I doubted of the use of the transient Image of the Cross I was of opinion that Prelacy was lawful and so was likely to continue if the Prelates would have given me leave But in 1640 they put a New Oath upon us Never to Consent to the Alteration of the present frame of Prelacy as under Archbishops Bishops Deans Archdeacons c. and that it ought so to stand And I thought it was then time when I was put to such a solemn Oath to search more throughly into all the matter before I sware And in searching I found in general that almost all Writers for Episcopacy either confound Diocesan Prelacy such as ours with the Episcopacy of a single Church or at least all their proof extendeth to no more than I have here granted When they offer us the definition of a Bishop which few of them do it is such as neither supposeth any more Churches than one to be his Charge nor any Presbyters under him at all but only a Power of Ordaining Presbyters and ruling them when he hath them whether in one Church or more And I find that they are so far from proving that ever the Apostles appointed a distinct Office of Presbyters which had not the power of the Keys over the People in foro interiore exteriore as they call them but had only power to Teach and Worship under Bishops as a superior Office or Order as that they prove not any such to have ever been under the Apostles themselves and some of themselves do plainly deny it Nor do they prove that long after the Presbyters were any more subject to the Bishops than the Deacons are now to the Archdeacon or the Bishops to the Archbishop who are of the same Order So that whoever else they speak to they say nothing to me and seem not to know where the Controversie lyeth viz. 1. Whether a Bishop of the lowest rank being no Archbishop or having no Bishops under him over many Churches or Societies of Christians stated under their proper Pastors or Presbyters for ordinary personal Communion in all God's publick Worship be of Divine or Lawful Humane Institution 2. Whether an Order or Office of Presbyters that have not the power of the Keys even in foro exteriore be of Divine or Lawful Humane Institution whom for brevity I shall hereafter call half-Presbyters So that the Question is not whether one Man was after sometime called peculiarly the Bishop and in the same Church sate over Presbyters of the same Office as Archpresbyters or as Archdeacons over Deacons or Archbishops over Bishops Nor yet whether there were or should be a General sort of Bishops or Archbishops over the Bishops of particular Churches But whether any stated Body of Worshiping Christians as afore described like our Parish Churches that have unum altare should be without a Bishop of their own or without a Pastor that hath the threefold power before described of Leading the People in Doctrine Worship and Discipline called the power of the Keys And whether he be a true Presbyter or Minister of Christ that wants this power And whether they that depose the Parish Ministers of
saying at most and if it be given If not able his ability must be plainly deficient as to the decision of our main controversie of the difference between Bishops and Presbyters which dependeth on it If unwilling he was unwilling to give us any solid satisfactory decision of this Case 2. Being his Neighbour I wrote in his Life time a Confutation of that Assertion that the ordained received their Office and Power properly from the Ordainer as the neerest Efficient of it in my Disput of Ordination in my Disput of Church-Government and I proved that the Power or Office is immediately from Christ and that the Ordainers do but design the Person that shall receive it and Ministerially deliver him possession by an investing Sign 3. Either the Office of a Presbyter is of Divine Institution or of Humane Either fixed by the Holy Ghost in the Apostles immutably or made and alterable by the Bishops If the Office be of Divine institution and fixed for the Churches constant use whether by Christ immediately or by the Holy Ghost in the Apostles than it is not in the Bishops Power to Altar it And so whatever the Ordainers please to give them is none of the measure of their Power As the Arch-Bishop may Crown or anoint the King and yet not give him what Power he please Or rather as it is of Divine appointment that the Husband should be the Governour of the Wife And she that chooseth him and he that Marrieth them cannot alter it nor do they give him his measure of Power as they please but suppose him endowed with that by God and do only choose the Person that shall receive it and Ministerially invest him in the Possession of it And if the Priest that marrieth them should by any words Contradict or limit this institution of God it were a Nullity and invalid If he do but say I pronounce you Husband and Wife He therefore pronounceth the man to have that Power of a Husband which God hath given him though he vainly say after you shall have but so much or so much of it And so it is in present Case If God have made the Ministerial Office he hath made it something constituted of its essential parts And if so what man hath Power to alter it But if it be humane yea and made by the Bishops then I confess they may alter it or destroy it And if a Presbyter have what power the Ordainers please to give him every Ordainer may alter the Office and make a new Species of Church Ministers at his pleasure Prove that and our dispute is at an end But Papists Greeks and Protestants are agreed against it 4. If Presbyters receive that which he calleth the first Power which he would not deny though he would not grant it is all that at present I am pleading for it And it isall that in their ordination they receive as he saith as to the Word and Sacraments If then the Office of a Presbyter continue the same Power of the Keys as to Excommunication and Absolution as it doth of administring the Word and Sacraments at present I rest satisfied with this In which Learned Spalatensis and those that go with him cannot be confuted For this proveth that their Divinely-instituted Office Essentially containeth this Power of the Keys though to be exercised under the inspection of a Superiour 5. And if this Inspection would prove that they have not the Power or that their Office or Order is therefore distinct it will also prove that Bishops have not the Power of the Keys because they exercise it under the Inspection of Metropolitans Arch-Bishops Primates or Patriarchs And also that they are of a distinct Order from all these And that a Physition hath no Power to Guide or Govern his voluntary Patients in order to Cure and that he is off a distinct Office from the Colledge and President because he is under their inspection And are not all Bishops under the Government of the King as well as Physitions and other Subjects And have they no Power of the Keys because he ruleth them And as a Presbyter might do nothing without the Bishop so no one Bishop could do any thing without other Bishops For he had no Episcopal Power till they ordained him And as to after Government or that which he calleth the grant of a Second Power 6. Is it any thing but Humane License to Exercise the Power of Office of Divine institution before received And is not the Magistrates License as necessary to the Bishop and the Presbyter too as the Bishops is to the Presbyter 7. And I take it for undenied among Christians that humane Power of Government extendeth but to the Ordering and not the Nulling of a Function instituted by God It is not referred to King or Bishop whether there shall be a Preaching or none Sacraments or none Church discipline and exercise of the Keys or none no more than whether there shall be a Scripture and Divine Law a Christ a Heaven and whether men shall be good or bad saved or damned But only by whom and when and how this Divine Function shall be so exercised as may best attain the end as to those circumstances not determined of by God and not contradicting Gods Institutions Therefore if the Bishops say that the Preachers of the Gospel shall be silenced perhaps by hundreds or thousands while the necessity of the Peoples Souls is undeniable their Authority in this should hinder no man from going to Preach further than their violence hindreth And so by his own Rule it must be as to Discipline if Discipline be a Work belonging to a Presbyter And as Spalatensis saith of Confirmation the Presbyter should do it though the Bishop rorbid him 8. The Second Power which the Presbyter must receive from the Prelate for Teaching Worshipping and Governing the Plock is either 1. For the exercise of it in General to any fit persons or else for the limitation of him to such a particular Flock 2. And it is either a General License or power at once given to do all his Work or to do this of Government whenever there is cause or else it is a particular License for each particular act 1. We deny not but that as a Physician Licensed to practice is not thereby made the Physician of this or that Person Hospital or City but have a particular Call for such an Exercise or Application of his skill So an Ordained Minister of Christ hath no prepared Object on which to Exercise a Pastoral Office but by a particular Call to such a Flock But however you Censure our simplicity for it we are resolved to believe till you say more against it 1. That the same may be said of a Bishop too and therefore by your Argument when this Bishop is fixed in a particular Flock he receiveth a second power as you call it and so without it hath not the power of the Keys any more than the
Presbyter and so must be of a distinct Order from the Bishops that give him his second power And who giveth them theirs And if you rise to a Patriarch or Pope what Superiour of another Order giveth them their second Power 2. That institution or fixing a man before Ordained to a particular Flock doth not make him of another Order or Office nor is a new Ordination nor is he as oft Ordained and made of another Office as he changeth his Flock or receiveth a new License from the Bishop or the King from whom I had rather have it 3. That the People as well as the Bishop if not much more do give the Minister this opportunity for the exercise of his Office as the Patient chooseth his Physician And yet it is my Opinion that this will not prove that the People are his Governours much less that they give him a new Order or Office And of old the People chose their Bishops themselves It will be as much honour for you Learnedly to prove that there were no Kings in the World till Bishops made them as to confute D. Blondels Historical proof of the Peoples ancient choice of their Bishops 2. And as to a General License I will thank the King for it yea or any man that hath power to hinder me that he will give me leave to Preach and Exercise my Office But I do not think that every man that doth not hinder me when he can doth give me power And if a Bishop be so extraordinary good as not to silence nor hinder a Minister from Preaching Christ I do not think that this man is an Usurper in Preaching the Gospel for want of a License or second Power Nor yet in exercising the rest of his Office where he and the People do consent These things seem plain to us and they that whether by Learning or the Love of Riches and Honour and Domination are made wiser than we may suffer such Fools gladly while themselves are in re vel spe Rich Honourable and wise 3. And what is Ordination but a General Investiture in the power of performing the Ministerial Office And why may not the General Power or License be given at once as at twice I think Take thou Authority to Preach the Word of God and Administer the Holy Sacraments and the Discipline of the Church when thou art thereto lawfully called that is hast opportunity and fit Objects is a General License And a Man may presently Exercise this Office on Consenters Unless the sence be Take thee power when it shall be given thee 3. But if it be a Particular License that is here meant by the grant of second power I confess that there is somewhat considerable in it and that in old time the Bishop and his Clergy living together and meeting in the same Church the Presbyters like our Parish Curates now were in all the Worship of the day and in their privater Ministry to the People to be ruled by the Bishop and to Modifie and Circumstantiate all as he directed them And so may it be again But sure a Minister is not to travel an hundred miles to the Bishop to know whether he shall visit this sick man or give the Sacrament to the other and to know what Chapter he shall read and such like If it be not a General License that is meant it must needs suppose the Bishops presence 9. And seeing the Bishops may License a Presbyter to use the Keys the opening of this will help our understandings about the nature of the Bishops Office There is no act of Jurisdiction which they do not Ordinarily commit to others The sentence of Excommunication and Absolution is ordinarily decreed by a Lay-Chancellor And Spalatensis saith that Episcopal Jurisdiction may be done by a Lay Delegate The same sentence is Pronounced in Court by a Lay-Man or a meer Presbyter The same sentence is published in the Church by a Presbyter or Deacon And a Prince may give a License to exercise the Ministry to which we were Ordained I enquire then 1. Whether the granting of this Episcopal Power be a making that Man a Bishop that it 's granted to If so a Bishop a Presbyter and a Chancellor are all of one Office when thus impowred If not so then a Lay-man or one of another Office may have power to do the Work of the Bishops Office And what is the Office tell me if you can beside Authority and Obligation to do the Work A Lay-man and Presbyter may by the Bishop be Authorized and Obliged to do the Work of a Bishop and this ordinarily as an Office For so they do Ergo a Chancellor and a Presbyter may be made really a Bishop and yet in their esteem remain a Lay-man and a Presbyter still And is not that a Lay Office which a Lay-man may be Commissioned to do If a Lay-man were but Commissioned to do the Work of a Presbyter to Teach a Church ordinarily to Administer the Sacraments and to Excommunicate and Absolve in foro internae poenitentialis either it would make the Man a Presbyter or it would be a Nullity And if it be not so with the Bishops Office what is the Reason Is it not because it is not of Divine Specification and Institution but Humane and therefore mutable or such as Men may parcel out and commit to Lay-men by pieces as they please So much to Dr. Hammond's Appropriation of the Power of the Keys in that Treatise As to his Annotations I shall have occasion to recite them hereafter among those that give up the Diocesan Cause as opposed by us and therefore shall here pass them by His Dissertations against Blondel have a Premonition about Ordination which though most confident I shall manifest when I come to the point of Ordination to be most weak and indeed have done it before his death in my Disput of Ordin His first Preliminary Dissertation of Antichrist of the Mystery of Iniquity and of Diotrephes I will not be so needlesly tedious as to meddle with any further then to say that I will believe Dr. Hammond here and in his Annot. on 2 Thes 2. when I am fallen into so deep a sleep as to dream 1. That the famous Coming of Christ and our gathering together to him which is a great Article of the Christian Faith is but Titus his Destruction of Jerusalem and that the reward promised to all that love his appearing is meant to all that love the said Destruction of Jerusalem 2. And that this Destruction was not to be called nigh or at hand which fell out so few Years after 3. And that the Gentiles of remote Countries were so shaken in mind and moved about a Question of a few Years distance of the Destruction of the Jews more than about Christ's coming to the Common Judgment 4. And that the Gnosticks were indeed such terrible Persecutors of the Church who were dispersed Subjects when their Doctrine was but that they
Countries 4. What man will dream that when these went abroad the World to convert men they were the fixed Bishops of particular Churches first which they thus forsook 5. Who will believe that Joseph Silas Apollo Luke Mark Nathaniel Philip or any other when they had converted any City or Countrey had no power after to teach them as a Church or give them the Lords Supper no nor to Baptize them first nor to ordain them Bishops and settle them in order but must either have an Apostle or a City Bishop to come thither after them to do it Such Fancies are obtruded on the Church because the one Ministerial or Priestly Office is first dismembred and then new Officers feigned to be made up of the several Limbs Cap. 7. As he rob'd the Evangelists of the Power of the Keys he would now rob all the meer Presbyters of it and all without shew of Scripture proof from such words of Canons or Ancients as say the Presbyters shall do nothing without the Bishops 1. As if the Presbyters were no Rulers of the Flocks because the Bishops are Rulers of the Presbyters As if a Judge or a Justice were no Governour because he is under the King 2. O Cruel Bishops that will undertake to do that for the Souls of many hundred Parishes which many hundred Ministers are too little for that the Souls of men and their own together may be damn'd by the Omission of it If the power of the Keys be appointed for mens Salvation they perfidiously betray them that thrust out the many hundreds that should do it pretending that it belongeth to one man among the many hundred that cannot do it But of the Bishops great undertaking I must say more anon Cap. 8. Of the Chorepiscopi there is little that concerneth us saving that he cometh near to grant us all that we desire while that § 15 he saith that Learned men believe that in the Church of one Region of old there was but one Altar so that lgnatius rightly conjoyneth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And all Schismaticks were said to set up Altar against Altar As Cypr. de Unit. Eccle. Ep. 40. 72 73 This is the sum of all that we plead for And § 29. he mentioneth the Chorepiscopis as immitating the 70 when yet he had denied the 70 to have the power of the Keys which he supposeth the Chorepiscopi to have under the Bishops Of Clemens words in due place Cap. 9. About the sence of a Canon variously read And Cap. 10. Whether Eutychius Alexandrinus erred in one thing and therefore were not to be believed in another are little pertinent to our business In his 4th Dissert the Cap. 1. is but Proem but Cap. 2. he tells us that the Apostles as Bishops Governed the Churches which they had planted without the mediation of a Colledge of Presbyters all ways and he bringeth not a word to prove it but 1 Cor. 3. 6. You have not many Fathers in Christ I have begotten you by the Gospel c. 4. 15 16. I have planted and c. 9. 19 21. I will come to you will ye that I come with the Rod and c. 5 3 4. I as absent in Body but present in Spirit have judged This is all And will not the impartial Reader wonder at humane frailty how easily men believe what they would have to be true and what an evident Nothing will go for undenyable proof Let the Reader Note 1. That the question is not whether an Apostle after that he had planted a Church remain still an Apostle to them as well as others and have the Apostolical eminency of Power which is greater than any meer Bishop had 2. But first Whether the Apostles had any fixed Provinces or Cities undertaken as their special charge in which no other Apostle had Apostolical Power And 2. Whether there were not fixed Bishops setled by them in all the Churches which they planted 3. And whether it was not so in the Church of Corinth ' in particular Yea whether they had not more Bishops or Presbyters than one For by Unius which here he applyeth to Paul he meaneth Unicus Paul only or else he abuseth his Reader and himself And 1. He that will follow Paul in his Travels will find that he went the same way that some other Apostles went viz. John and Peter and therefore that they must have the same Diocesses or have their Diocesses notably intermixt John was in Asia as well as Paul and no man can prove that he was the Second Bishop of Ephesus or Asia as Paul's successor only when he was dead Nor will the Romans be willing to grant that Peter was Bishop of no more at Rome but the Jews only as this Dr. elsewhere intimateth lest that prove not that the Gentile Church of Rome was founded by Peter but by Paul alone 2. What proof hath he that besides Peter and John there were not many other Apostles per vices in the same Cities where Paul had been And that when they did come thither they had not Apostolical Power there 3. Doth not the Text expresly say that Paul and Barnabas long travelled together And doth it any where intimate that Paul was the Governour of Barnabas or the sole Bishop of the Churches planted by them both together Sure the people that would have worshipped Barnabas as Jupiter and Paul but as Mercury did see no Sign of such a Prelacy in Paul And the Apostles seem so to have ordered the matter by going by Couples as Christ sometimes sent two and two before him as if they had done it purposely to prevent these Monarchical conceits Peter and John were together at the healing of the Criple and the successful preaching that followed thereupon Sometime Paul and Barnabas are together sometime Paul and Silas and Barnabas and Mark Paul and Sosthenes are the inscribed Names who send the first Epistle to the Corinthians and Paul and Timothy the second And in the Text alledged it is said One saith I am of Paul and another I am of Apollo and c. 1. 12. Every one of you saith I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas And Paul baptized none of them save Crispus and Gaius and the houshold of Stephanus By which it appeareth that Peter was among them as well as Paul and if Peter had been only the Bishop of the Jews here also Apollos would not have been brought in as a third in a way of equality And the Controversie would have been otherwise decided by Paul by telling the Jews that Peter was their sole Bishop and the Gentiles that Paul was theirs and all of them that Apollos was but their Subject But he goeth quite another way to work preferring none nor dividing Dioceses but levelling Ministers as being but the helpers of their Faith And though they had Apostolical preeminence above Apollos yet Peter and Paul are not said to have a proper Episcopacy over him And
the Apostles there must be but just 13 or 14 in the whole world if they succeed them fully in the accidentals of their office But if not than their residence in Cities will not prove that they must succeed them in that accident any more than in the number 2. Because as is shewed the Apostles tyed not themselves to Cities only and what they did in preferring Cities was occasional as is said before 3. Nor is there the least proof beyond an ostentation of vain words and confidence that ever the Apostles setled Churches according to the civil form and put the Bishops of lesser Cities under the Metropolitans No more than that among themselves that Apostle was Ruler of the rest who had the Metropolis for his Seat The Papists themselves not pretending that Peter was Ruler of the rest because Rome was his Seat but that Rome must have the ruling Universal Bishop because it was the Seat of Peter And if the Metropolis made not one Apostle Ruler of the rest why should it do so by their successors And I never heard any attempt to prove that Mathew Bartholomew Lebbeus James the Apostle Thomas Philip and every one of the Apostles had a distinct independent Metropolis for his Episcopal Seat 4. Indeed it s but vain words of them that pretend that the Apostles fixed themselves in any Seat at all but it is certain by their Office and by History that they oft removed from place to place in order to call as much of the world as they were capable and were somtimes in Metropoles and sometimes in other places and though the ancients make them the first Bishops of Churches they do not say that they were Bishops of any particular Churches only exclusively to all others But the same Apostle that Planted ten or twenty Churches was the first Bishop of them all pro tempore setling fixed Bishops to succeed them 5. And whoever dreamed that Mark who was no Apostle was the Ruler of other Apostles at least that came into his Province because Alexandria was the second Metropolis 4. This pretended forming of the Churches as aforesaid is contrary to the Ends of Church institution and Communion which are the publick worshipping of God and personal Communion of Parochians or Cohabitants in that worship Sacraments and holy living in mutual assistance Whereas in a great part of the world Country Villages are so far from any Cities that if they must travel to them for this publick Communion they must spend all the Lords day in travaile and yet miss their Ends and come too late Nor can Women Children and aged ones possibly do it at all But if they are to have no such personal Communion with the City Churches but have it ordinarily among themselves then whatever men may say that strive about the Name they are not of that particular City Church as such but are of another Church at home which must have a BishopÌ„ because it is a Church 5. Their Civil and City or Diocesan frame contradicteth the plain institution or Law of Christ and of his Spirit For 1. Math. 28. 19. 20. it is the very Commission of the Apostles and their successors with whom Christ will be to the end of the world to Teach or Disciple all Nations and then to Baptizc them and so gather them into the Church Universal and then Teach them as Disciples all his Laws which includeth Congregating them in perticular Churches where they must be so taught Now as it is all Nations even the whole Countryes and not the Cities only that must be Discipled or convicted and Baptized so it is the whole Nations Villages and all of Baptized persons that must thus be Congregated into particular Churches and taught 2. To which add Act. 14. 23. the positive exemplary and so obliging ordinary practice of the Apostles They ordained them Elders in every Church so that 1. It is Gods will that Villages have Churches 2. And it is Gods will that every Church have a Bishop at least therefore it is Gods will that every Village have a Bishop which have a Church or that some Villages have Bishops And though every City be mentioned Tit. 1. 5. that only sheweth that de facto then and there Village Churches were rare or none but not de jure they must not be gathered nor doth he say ordain Elders in Cities only much less give them Rule according to the City power And as Ceuchrea had a Church which was no City so Act. 14. 23. will prove that they should have a Bishop For every Church is to have a Bishop And Ceuchrea was not a family-Church and so the name not used equivocally And Bishop Downams assertion that it was a Church with a mean Presbyter under the Bishop of Corinth is a naked unproved saying that deserveth no credit and is contradicted by Doctor Hammond who saith there was there no meer Presbyter in being 6. Had this form been setled as they Pretend in Cities only and Diocesses there would have been uncertainty and contentions what places should have Bishops and Churches and what places should have none For it is uncertain and litigious what place is to be taken for a City and what not For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes signifieth any great Town and some times strictly Towns incorprate and sometimes more strictly eminent Corporations now called Cities with us here in England And how great would the difficulty have been to determine when a Town was big enough to pass for a City or when it had privileges enow for that title If it be said that the account and name then and thus used was the directory they will then make Gods Church to depend for being upon a Name with heathen people If they will call Ceucbrea a City it shall have a Church otherwise it shall have none But there was no such controversie in those times 7. According to their model Churches shall be mutable and dissolvible at the will of the Magistrate yea of every Heathen Magistrate For if he will but change the priviledges and title of a Town and make it no City it must have no Church or Bishop And if he will remove the privileges and title the Church and Bishop must remove And if he will endow a big Village or Town with City privileges and name a Church and Bishop must be then made anew But who can believe that Christ thus modled his Churches in his institution 8. Yea after their model an infidel or Christian King aâ—iud agenâ— that never thinketh on it or intendeth it shall change the Churches and destroy them If by war a City be turned into no City or if the King for other reasons un-city it or if change of Government put it into another Princes power that shall for his convenience un city it the Church in City and Country is at an end though there remain people enow to constitute a Church 9. Yea a fire or an Earthquake by this Rule
livers But men that more fear to sin against God who can cast both soul and body into Hell than to lie in prison perhaps it is such Ministers as now are silenced for not saying subscribing or swearing as they are bid or it is some Church-Wardens who fear that they should be guilty of Persecution or Perjury which in their opinion are neither of them things indifferent if they should take the Oaths with the Articles that sometimes are offered them Or perhaps it is some one for not receiving the Sacrament either when a troubled Conscience maketh them fear lest they should eat and drink damnation to themselves or from a Minister or with a Church which they think the Scripture commandeth them to avoid whether such be in the right or in the wrong no wonder if they refuse to repent though they suffer when they fear a greater suffering from God Obj But the Minister of the place though he excommunicates none may seek to bring the sinner to repentance and may satisfie the Church of the justness of the excommunication Ans 1. In the nature of the thing they go together and are the work of the same persons And therefore Tertullian assureth us that in his time Discipline was exercised in the Church-meeting when they had been worshipping God 2. Who is either so fit or so obliged to satisfie the Church of the Act as he that doth it and hath examined all the Cause A parish Minister cannot bring any unwilling person to come over to speak with him not that we would have him have a forcing power but he cannot do his own Ministerial part which is to refuse to be the Pastor of such a man as refuseth to speak with him at all or to take him for his Pastor nor to forbear himself to give him the Sacrament so that he that neither heard the examination of the Cause by the Chancellor nor perhaps can have any speech with the person or at least with the Accuser or any of the Witnesses is very unfit to justifie another mans act and to satisfie the Church that it is well done much less to exhort the offender to repent who to him perhaps if he vouchsafe to speak to him will justifie his own cause when he cannot call witnesses to convince him And to speak to that which is our common case we have few persons excommunicated that ever I saw or knew of in forty years time save only the Conscientious persons beforementioned And when the parish Minister oft taketh them for the godliest persons in his Parish and the Bishop or Chancellor excommunicates them as Impenitent schismaticks how shall such a parish Minister justifie that and satisfie the person or people of the justice of it which he himself lamenteth as a hainous sin which tendeth to the dissipation of his flock But I come nearer to enquire into this officiating per alium by which an absent Bishop is supposed to do his office in the several Parishes of his Diocese 1. That alius or Official is either a Layman or a Clergyman 2. If a Clergyman he is either one of the same Order with the Bishop or another 3. Either it is the meer accidentals of his sacred function which he committeth to another or the proper Acts of it 4. Either it is pro hac vice in some case of necessity or it is as by an ordinary stated Official 1. If it be a Layman and the work be but Accidental or Extrinsick to the sacred function I grant that he may do it But for such works we need no Bishop For what a Layman may do when he bids him he may do when the King or his Magistrates bids him This is not the thing in question But if it be a proper Pastoral Act this Layman that doth it either receiveth from the Bishop power and obligation to do it or not If not he cannot do it as his Official If he do then he is a Pastor or Bishop himself and is Ordained and so no Layman For I provoke any dissenter living to tell me wherein the sacred office or any other lieth but in a Power or Authority and an Obligation to do the proper works of that office so that undeniably here is a contradiction And if any were of opinion that pro tempore in a case of necessity a Layman might do any Ministerial sacred act as Preach Baptize Consecrate the Sacrament of Christs body and blood excommunicate absolve c. 1. I answer if that were true if would but prove that those Acts are not proper to the sacred function in such a case of necessity as single Acts but only as ordinarily and statedly done by one separated to them 2. And therefore this would not at all concern our case which is not about extroardinary Acts in cases of necessity but about an ordinary stated course by Courts Chancellors and Officials 2. But if the Agent or Official were not a Lay Chancellor but a Clergyman if he be of the same Order with the Bishop than I grant all for it granteth me all even that every Church should have an ordinarily present Bishop But if he be supposed to be but of an inferior Order then I proceed as before either the Bishop giveth him power and obligation to do the proper work of the Bishop or not If not he is not hereby enabled to do it If yea then he hath thereby made him a Bishop For to be a Bishop is nothing else than to have Authority and Obligation to do the proper work of a Bishop But if it be but an Accidental or a common work which another may do it is not that in question nor do we need the Office of a Bishop for it Moreover either the Bishop pro hic nunc was himself obliged to do that Act which he committeth to another or not he but the other was by office obliged to do it If he himself was obliged to do it he sinned in not doing it If he were not it was not truly his act or part of his office work nor did he do it by another but that other did only his own work for which not the Bishop but he shall have the reward Obj. But doth not he that sendeth his servant to pay a debt himself in Law-sense pay it per alium what another doth as his Instrument reputatively he doth himself Ans I grant it because it is none of the debtors proper work nor is he at all obliged to it to bring the money and deliver it himself but to cause it to be delivered Therefore in sending it he doth all that he is obliged to do and when another is his instrument it is supposed that he is not obliged himself to do that which his instrument doth but only to cause the doing of it by himself or an Instrument as he please so that stil this is nothing to the case of a work that is proper to the Bishops Office Obj. But we therefore
grant that it is not proper to the Bishops Office to Judge Excommunicate or Absolve but only to Rule the Action by giving another power to do it Ans 1. If so then nothing but Commissioning others is the proper work of the Episcopal order and then any Presbyter may in foro interno vel externo ordinarily exercise the whole power of the Keys upon the flocks he may Excommunicate and absolve publikly as an act common to his Office with the Bishops if it Please the Bishop to give him Power which he may do without making him a Bishop And if so I enquire whether God be not the maker of the Presbyters office and not the Bishop and whether God only describing it give not all the power by way of Law Charter or Institution and the Bishop give it not only by way of ministerial solemnization and investiture and if so whether he that is duely called to the Pastoral office which God only made and discribed wust not in season do the works of that office whether men commission him or not or whether at least he any more need the Bishops commission for Church Government Excommunication and Absolution than for Preaching and Celebrating the Lords supper seeing both are now thus confessed acts common to the order of the Presbyter and the Bishop I think all this is past contradiction And I ask then whether that all giving of power to another be proper to the Bishops order If yea than a Minister cannot give his Clerk power to chuse the Psalm or tune c. If not then may not a Bishop if he please also give power to the Presbyters to ordaine and to give other men power For if it be his proper work only to give power to others to do all the sacred acts of office he may give others power to ordain and if so then Ordination will be like Preaching Sacraments and Discipline which are none of them proper to the Bishops order And is not Church discipline the exercise of the power of the keys If then the power of the keys may be exercised by the Presbyters when ever the Bishops please it seems it is common to them with him as well as Sacraments and therefore belongeth not to a Bishop as a Bishop but as a Presbyter And if in my dispute of ordination I have fully proved that the power of the Ministry is given by Christ so far immediatly as that it passeth not through the hands of Electors or Ordainers to the receiver but is given by the meer Instrumentality of the Law or institution and that the Electors and Ordainers do no more than determine of the qualified person that receives it and publickly invest him or ministerially solemnize his Possession as the Burgesses chuse and the Steward or Recorder investeth the Major of a Corparation whose power floweth immediatly from the Charter granted by the King then all this controversie is at an end and I doubt not but that 's fully proved And if commanding another to do an office work be all that is proper to the Bishop I ask whether any thing there be proper to him and so whether we must have such an office For may not the King command the Minister to do all the work which belongeth to his function may he not appoint Magistrates and make Law to command it may he not punish those that do it not Is he not custos utriusque tabulae and must he not corect mal-administration in ministers and drive them to do their duty No doubt he may Obj. But he doth not ordaine Ministers though he command them to do their duty when ordained Ans 1. Our present question is not about Ordination but commanding men to Govern the Church by Discipline or fully to Rule by the Keys the people of a particular Church If this so far belong to the Presbyters office that he may do it by the Bishops Licence let him that can tell me why he may not do it by the Kings Licence and then as they were wont to say of old exceptâ ordinatione nothing but ordination only is proper to the Bishops office And that this is not proper neither 1. This objection it self doth intimate seeing the Bishop may give another Power to ordaine and then why may not the King 2. Many of the Schoolmen and the Papists themselves confess that the Pope say some or Prelates say others may impower an Abbot or Presbyter to ordaine of which see that unanswerable book of Voetius de desperata causa Papatus against Jansenius for Presbyters ordination 3. And our Church of England causeth Presbyters to impose hands with the Bishops and Bishop Downam aforecited is angry with his answerer for supposing that he pleaded for sole power of ordination in the Bishop when he spake but for a chief power And if nothing but a chief power in ordaining be proper to a Bishop why then are the Churches so confounded and beggered and altered by a contrary practice And why is a new office of Bishops set up in the world whose work is to hinder the Ministers of Christ from their officwork under pretence of a power of Licensing them to it when God licenceth them to the work when he calleth them to that office which essenti ally consisteth in a power and Obligation to do it when they have opportunity Moreover my Lord Bacon in his considerations as hath well manifested if impartiall wise men could have bin heard that the office of a Bishop is a function consisting in the exercise of personall skill or abilities and therefore must be done by him that hath them and not committed to another as the office of a Judg or Lawyer of a Phisitian of a Tutor c. no man chooseth a Tutor or Phisitian meerly to send another to him for his Tutor or Phisitian but â—â— do the work himself It is not like the place of a King whose right dependeth not on his parts or skill because he may Govern by others that are able And Grotius who one would think by their respect to him should have been regarded by them truly saith de Imperio sum potest Pag. 290 Nam illud Quod quis per alium facit per se facere videtur ad eas tantum pertinet actiones quarum causa efficiens proxima a jure indefinita est that is For this saying That whose a man doth by another he seemeth to do by himself belongeth only to those actions which neerest efficient cause is not defined by the Law But sure when God made the Pastoral office he meant that the persons called to it should do the work and not only appoint other men to do it And I would know whether the work of a Presbyter as to consecrae and celebrate the Sacrament c may be done per alium by one that is no Presbyter If not as all say not then I ask whether the Bishops work or the Presbyters be the more sacred If the Presbyters
then his Office is more sacred If the Bishops or both alike then that Bishops work may no more be done per alium then the Presbyters Moreover I know no Bishops but would willingly be more Respected and Honoured than the Presbyters and if they desire it should be only by way of fear they neither think or wish like Ministers of Christ nor like sober men But if by way of love who knoweth not what advantage the present Pastor hath above the absent caeteris paribus to get the peoples love and Paul would have it to be so 1 Thes 5. 12 13. It is those that Labour among them and admonish them whom they must esteem highly in Love not for their titles and dignities but for their work sake And who knoweth not that he that Loveth a man for Preaching the word of salvation to him is likelier to come to him whose doctrine daily edifieth him and comforteth him than to him whom one of a hundred of his Diocese never heard a Sermon or a good word from in all their lives If it be for the work sake that they must or will be Loved is not he liker to be most Loved who is still with them and prayeth and praiseth God with them and comforteth and confirmeth them and resolveth their doubts and quieteth their troubled Consciences and visiteth them in sickness and taketh care of the poor and visiteth them from house to house than he that once or never came among them and is unknnown And if the people be Rebellious and wicked it is the present Pastor who shall be most hated and opposed which if it be for Christ is a good and comfortable thing and hath a special promise Mat. 5 10. 11 12. And that Pastor who is most beloved of the good people and most hated by the bad is he that will do most good for mens salvation and will have most comfort in his Soul and at last the greatest reward from God and that is caeteris paribus the present Pastor And it were worth the noting if blind men would see that this is our great reason of the common calamities of the Churches that when the best of the people love their present faithfull Pastors and the worst hate them most and love best the Absent Bishops that trouble them as they do the dead Saints for whom they keep holy â—â—ajes these wicked people fly to the Bishop and seek to make the present Pastors suspected or odious to him as Schismaticks or such as are against the Bishops mind and honour and because these Villains Love the absent Bishop better then the present Pastors therefore the Bishop that knoweth them not but by hearsay taketh such for the honestest men in the Parish and so taketh their words against the Ministers and to the utmost of my experience I speak it ordinarily that Minister shall pass with the Bishop for a Schismatick a Puritan a seditious Fellow or a stark knave let him be more Learned than Hierom more industrious than Augustin more holy than Macarius or at least as suspected of these crimes whom the flattering malignant will so represent to him especially if he be a sensual Gentleman that cannot endure to have his lusts and licentiousnes reproved or controlled by a Minister of Christ And when these lies and slanders have encouraged the ungodly accusers by their successe while they engage the Bishop against the present Pastors and cause him to turn their troubler hinderer or persecutor then is the Prelate and the Pastor become as enemies whose interests are grown inconsistent and then they come to have their several Parties and the debauched take one side and the sober and religious the other and what followeth upon this he is mad in this age who is ignorant after so great experience But I shall add more of this subject in the Chapter following CHAP. XII The just opening and understanding of the true nature of the Pastoral office and Church Government would end these controversies about Episcopacy THe name of Church Government so far deceiveth undistinguishing gross crinconsiderate wits as that they take the controversie to be but whether we shall have order or anarchie Church Government or none As if neither the Magistrates Government of the Sword were any thing nor yet the Pastors Government by the word But I would fain know of these men what more it is that they would have and what is the Church Government which they so much contend for 1. Is it an Universal Legislation It is high and damnable Treason against Christ for any mortal men to claime it Universal Legislation is the prerogative of the Universal King There is no Universal King but Christ who else is Governour of all the world or all the Churches in the world And Christ hath in nature and Scripture given the world already an Universal Law If he hath done it well take not on you to amend it If you say he hath done it ill either take not on you to be Christians or else call your self the Christ that is Anti-Christ if you will take Christs place and take upon you to amend his work If you dream of an Universal Pope or General Council as having this power you will but make true Anti-Christs of them and foolishly confound a humane constitution with a Divine and the Roman Empire with all the world For you are ignorant in Church History if you see not plainly that Popes Patriarks and Primates stand all on the same foundation And that both they and Councils falsly called General were but Imperial or confined to one Princes Dominion called or ruled usually by the Emperours who had no power in other Princes Territories No Councils conteining any considerable members but such as were in that one Empire or formerly had been of it and so kept the custome which then they had received except that the Romans placed one Bishop on the borders of Scythia or Tartary and one on the borders of Persia in hope that he might have influence further into the Countries and rarely one or two such might be at a Council called General so that certainly there is no Universal Law-giver or Judge but Christ This therefore is not the Church Government of Bishops which men contend for 2. What is it then is it an Universal Exposition of the Scripture or of Christs Laws why an exposition truly Universal is for Regulation as the Law it self And none ever had such power even in civil Government but the Law-givers themselves Else the Expositor of the Lawes should be King and not the maker seeing it is his sence that the subject must be ruled by But if it be a particular decisive exposition which you meane such as a Judge in deciding particular controversies I shall say more to that anon 3. If it be any Coactive or Coercive power of Church Government that you meant by mulcts or Corporal penalties no Bishops as such have any thing to do with it not only
Bilson but the generality of the Prelatists disclaime it and confess that it belongeth only to the King and Magistrates and that they receive it from the King if ever they exercise any sâ—â—h 4. What is it then is it to be the Kings Ecclesiastical Council to prepare such Canons as he shall enact Of Canons I shall say more anon But though Pastors may be the fittest to Council Kings yet that giveth them no power nor doth aptitude make an office nor is the King tyed to them but may advise whith whom he please And experienced present Pastors are usually fitter to give advice in the matters of Religion than they And even Civil impartial Noblemen have usually proved wiser sobâ—rer and more peaceable and happy Church Councellours than the interessed partial Clergy I am not of Erastus mind that all Church Government belongeth to the Magistrates I have lately published my judgment of that matter in certain Propositions to Ludov. Molinaeus But I grant to him and all sober impartial Divines do grant that all forceing Government by the Sword belongeth to Magistrates and Parents only and not to any Bishops as such It followeth therefore that no Bishops power extendeth to any other effect but only to work on the Consciences of Volunteers unless as the Magistrates or Parents may constraine them by penalties to submit to it Suppose therefore a while that the Magistrates force were withdrawn from your discipline and left it to itself you would then know better by experience wherein its strength consisted That man would then Rule the people most who did most effectually convince their reason aud prevaile with Conscience and further nothing would be done Are not our Bishops well aware of this Do they not themselves confess how little their Government would signifie above the Government of present Presbyters unless they could give clear convincing Reasons to the people which absent strangers are unlike to do What do you think your peculiar power would signifie in one year above a Presbyrers if the Magistrate left all at liberty in their Church obedience to their Pastors would not the present Pastors carry almost all with the best and soberest of the flocks Especially where Bishops make it their office to forbid the Pastors to do theirs and to keep them from Preaching the word of life Their holding fast the secular conjunct power and using it so much doth shew what they trust to they say themselves what would the Keys signifie without the Sword and the Pishops Government prevail where none are punished for despising it if the Bishop excommunicate a faithfull Preacher neither he nor his flock will much regardit but goe on in the service of the Lord. And perhaps some will excommunicate the Bishop and be even with him O! that the Magistrates would a few Years try what the Keys can do in England of themselves and valeant quantum valere possunt Not that I would wish him to leave off his own duty to punish sin but let it not be mixed with Church Offices so as that all that shall be imputed to the Bishops Keys which is effected only by the Magistrates Sword I deny not but the Magistrate may moderately drive men to hear Gods word and to do the immediate duties of their places But not to profess that they are Christians when they are not or that they consent to Church Communion when they do not Nor to take those Privileges which belong not to them No man hath right to Church Communion who had rather be excommunicated then repent of sin Therefore if Gods word and an excommunication will not bring him to profess Repentance he should not be either Rackt or Imprisoned to force him to say he doth repent when it is certain that he doth not indeed repent who will not profess it by easier means Nor hath that man right to absolutiaon and Church Communion who only prefereth it before a Goale The effects of the Church Keyes are talked of but are indeed unknown where secular force doth deterr men into lyeing professions of repentance and drive unwilling persons in to the Communion of the Church No unwilling person should have the Seal of pardon put into his hands Obj. But we cannot say they are unwilling who consent though moved by the penalty of the Law and Sword Ans Yes he is to be called unwilling who hath not the willingness which Christ maketh necessary He that is not willing to have Church Communion for it self and for Christ and his salvation is not willing of it at all indeed nor in Gods account For it is only freedome from a Prison that he is willing of and of Church Communion as a means to that and not as a means to the end that God appointed it As he that consenteth to be Baptized only to heal the Kings evil or to save his life is not to be Baptized nor taken for a Christian nor is it Baptism indeed but touching only which he consenteth to so is it in this case Obj. But how know you but them in hath righter ends together with these punishment brings many a man to reason and true repentance Ans You suppose your selves that the word and Keys will not prevail with him of themselves and therefore it is that you desire force your own Consciences tell you that it is but to avoid punishment that you suppose him to profess repentance Otherwise when your threats have brought him to repentance try what is the cause by remitting the penalty on his body and after freely leaving him to himself Obj. But some are like Children that will hear reason when their stubbornness is taken down Therefore it may also have better motives for ought you know Ans 1. Men that are dealt with in the matters of Salvation are not to be thus used as Fools and Children about common things but as men that must live and die as they choose 2. And God hath left us no such means to bring men into a right Choice in things of this nature Otherwise you might set Infidels on the Rack till they consent to be Baptized or send them to Prison and then say how know you but this as the Rod doth Children hath brought them to their witts But the Church of Christ never took this course nor never thus understood his will 3. The case is plain to men that will understand When God hath made mens free consent the Condition of their Salvation and the Profession of a free consent to be the Condition of Church Communion and what wise man would have lower that will not make the Church a swine stie It followeth that the Pastors must have the evidence of such a Profession of free and voluntary consent or else they must not receive such persons Now such a one that hath been long tried by the word and by the penalty of Excomunication it self and refuseth to profess Repentance but only professeth it when no other means will escape a Prison doth
shall obey as his Ministers any whomsoever the King shall commit any part of his power about Church matters to and promise them due obedience as such And so you see what is not the Question now to be debated But the Question is Whether the present Church Government in England as distinct from the Kings and Magistrates part be so good or lawful that we should swear or subscribe our approbation of it our obedience to it or that we will never in our place and calling endeavour an alteration of it no though the King command us and that every man in the three Kingdoms that vowed to endeavour such alteration is so clearly and utterly disobliged as that all strangers that never knew him may subscribe or declare that he is disobliged or not obliged to it by that Vow CHAP. II. The first Argument against the English Diocesans That their form quantum in se destroyeth the particular Church Form of God's Institution and setteth up a Humane Form in its stead ARGUMENT I. WE cannot subscribe or swear to that form of Church Government as good or lawful which in its nature excludeth or destroyeth the very specifical nature of the particular Churches which were instituted by the Holy Ghost and setled in the primitive times and is it self a humane from set up in their stead But such we take the present Diocesane form to be Ergo The Major will be denied by very few that we have now to do with And those few that will deny it must do it on this supposition 1. That the Holy Ghost did institute that particular Church Form which is destroyed but pro tempore And Secondly That he allowed men since to set up one or more of their own in its stead But the disproof of this supposition will fall in more fitly when I have shewed what Church Form was first setled The Minor I thus prove The Species of a particular Church which the Holy Ghost did institute was one Society of Christians united under one or more Bishops for personal Communion in publick worship and holy living The Diocesane English frame is destructive of or inconsistent with this species of a particular Church Ergo The Diocesane English frame is inconsistent with or destructive of the Species of the Holy Ghosts institution In the Major 1. By Bishops I mean Sacred Ministers authorized by Divine appointment to be the stated Guides of the Church by Doctrine Worship and Discipline under Christ the Teacher Priest and Ruler of the Church Whether he have a superior Arch-Bishop I determine not Nor now whether he may ordain Pastors for other Churches What I mean by Personal Communion and whether it be consistent with divers Assemblies I have fully shewed before I mean that the said Churches were no more numerous than our English Parishes nor had more Assemblies Or no more than could have the same personal Communion and that there were never any Churches infimaeâ—vel prime speciei which consisted of many such stated Assemblies I shall therefore now prove 1. That the Churches of the Holy Ghosts institution were no more numerous or were such single Congregations And that they had each such Bishops and Pastors will be proved partly herewith and partly afterward 2. And that such Churches do tota specie differ from the Diocesane Churches and from our present Parish Churches as they define them and are inconsistent with them And the first I shall prove 1. From the Holy Scriptures 2. From the Confessions of the Diocesanes 3. From the testimony of Antiquity All proving fully that the ancient Episcopal Churches were but such single Societies or Congregations as I have described and such as our Diocesses of many hundred Churches are different from and inconsistent with CHAP. III. That the primitive Episcopal Churches of the Holy Ghosts Institution were but such Congregations as afore described THese following particulars set together I think will by the Impartial be taken for full proof 1. In all the New Testament where ever there were more stated societies than one for publick worship as afore described they are called Churches in the Plural Number and never once a Church in the Singular Number except when the Universal Church is mentioned which containeth them all This is visible in Act. 9. 31. and 14. 41. and 16. 5. Rom. 16. 4 and 16. 1 Cor. 7. 17. and 11. 16. and 14. 33 34. unless that mean the several meetings of the same Assembly at several times and 16. 1 19. 2 Cor. 8. 1 18 19 23 24. and 11. 8 28. Gal. 1. 22. 1 Thess 2. 14. 2 Thess 1. 4. Rev. 1. 4 11 20. and 2. 7 11 17 29. and 3. 6 13 22 23. and 22. 16. If any say how prove you that all these were but single Congregations I answer 1. It is granted me by all that these plural terms Churches included many single Congregations 2. I shall prove anon that the most of the particular Churches named in Scripture were but such Congregations 3. And no man can give me any proof that a Society consisting of divers such Congregations is any where called a Church singularly And therefore we are not to believe that the plural term meaneth many such singulars as are no where singularly named 2. Particular Churches are described so in Scripture as fully proveth my aforesaid limitation and description As 1 Cor. 11. 16 18 20 22. When ye come together in the Church I hear that there be divisions among you A Church consisted of such as came together When ye come together into one place this is not to eat the Lords Supper And it is the Assemblies that are called Churches when he saith We have no such custom nor the Churches of God So 1 Cor. 14. 4. He that prophesieth edifieth the Church that is the Assembly that heareth him and not many hundred such Assemblies that are out of hearing Vers 5. Except he interpret that the Church may receive edifying Vers 12. Seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the Church Object May not the whole Church be edified per partes Ans Yes but it must be per plures vel diversis vicibus Not at once by the same man if the far greatest part of the Church be absent Obj. But is not the whole man edified naturally or morally by the edification of a part Answ Yes if it be a noble part Because the whole man being naturally One by the unity of the soul or form there is a natural Communion and Communication from part to part But one Corporation in a Kingdom may be edified or enriched without the wealth or edification of the rest And this Text plainly speaketh of Immediate Edification of that Church that heareth and this at once and by one speaker So Vers 19. In the Church I had rather speak one word with my understanding that I may teach others Here the Church is plainly taken for the Assembly Vers 23. If therefore the whole Church be come together
and educating young men for the Ministery there being then no Universities to do it That the Schools were under his care you may see proved in Filesacus 22. The Consecrating of devoted Virgins to say nothing of Altars and other utensils 23. The oversight of the Monasteries 24. The writing of Canonical Epistles as they called them to Great men to other Churches c. 25. The granting of Communicatory Letters I have named all that come suddenly to my memory but it 's like not all And how many Parishes how many hundred thousand souls can one man do all this for think you I will not tire you with citing out of Isidore Gregory Ambrose Chrysost c. the strict Charges terribly laid on Bishops but only now recite the Preachers words whose Oration Eusebius giveth us at the dedication of a new Church Histor Eccl. l. 10. c. 4. It is Paulinus Bishop of Tyre In which he tells them that it is the work of Bishops Intimae animarum vestrarum theoriae videre introspicere ubi experientia temporis prolixitate unumquemque vestrum exacte inquisivit studioque cura cunctos vos honestate doctrina quae secundum pietatem est instruit It was then thought a Bishops duty to be intimately acquainted with the minds of his flock and exactly enquire after every one of them even menservants and maidservants by name saith Ignatius as cited before All this was then the Bishops work Almost all this except the Ceremonies Dr. Hammond proveth industriously belonged to the Bishop Let him faithfully do it all and let his Diocese then be as big as he please I might have added Concil Arelat 1. c. 16. that people are to be absolved in the same place where they were Excommunicated which intimateth it must be only in the Bishops Church And in Synod Hybernic Patricii in Spelman p. 52. All that was more than necessary to a poor man that had a Collection was to be laid on the Bishops Altar which implyeth that each Church had one Bishop and one Altar And c. 21. non in Ecclesiam ut ibi examinetur causa And c. 25 26 27. no Clergy-man but the Bishop to dispose of Church offerings Clericus Episcopi in Plebe novus ingressor baptizare offerre non licet c. with much more which intimateth what Churches were of old But so much shall suffice for proof of the Minor of the first Argument that our Diocesane Form 1. taketh down the Church Form of Gods Institution and the primitive Churches possession 2. And setteth up a humane form in its stead yea one only Church instead of a thousand or many hundred And therefore I add CHAP. VIII That the Diocesans cause the errour of the Separatists who avoid our Churches as false in their Constitution and would utterly disable us to confute them WHen the Brownists say that our Churches are no true Churches they do not mean that they are not Societies of mens devising but that they are not Societies of Gods Instituting And this they prove upon the principles of the Diocesans thus If your Churches be of Gods Institution de specie it is either the Parish Churches or the Diocesane Churches that are so But neither the Parish-Churches nor the Diocesane Ergo. 1. That the Parish Churches are not such they prove because by the Diocesans own confession they are no Churches at all except equivocally so called It is one of their own principles and we grant it that Episcopus Plebs Constitute a Church as a King and Subjects constitute a Kingdom and as a Schoolmaster and Scholars make a School and as a Master and houshold make a Family And that ubi est Episcopus as Cyprian saith ibi est Ecclesia which is nothing but Plebs pastori adunata And that a people without a Bishop truly so called are but a Church equivocally as Scholars without a Master are a School or as a company of Christians in a ship or house accidentally met and praying together are a Church c. And as Dr. Field before cited saith None but a Bishop hath a Church all others are but his assistants or as commonly called his Curates Therefore when a Prelatist pleadeth that our Parish Churches are true Churches either of Gods or mans institution they do forsake the principles of their party as now maintained or they contradict themselves or they play with equivocations and ambiguities II. And that a Diocesane Church which is one composed of the carcases of multitude of mortified Churches is not jure divino having said so much to prove my self I will not stay to tell you how easily the Separatists may prove it So that for my part as much as I have written and done against them I profess I am not able to confute them on the Diocesane grounds but would be one of them if I had no better Quest How then must they be confuted Ans. Thus or not at all by me A Presbyters office is not to be judged of by the Bishops will or description but by God's the institutor As if the King describe the Lord Mayors office in his Charter If the Recorder or whoever giveth him his oath and installeth him shall misdescribe the office and limit it and say falsly you have no power to do this or that This will not at all diminish his power as long as it is the Charter that they profess to go by He shall have the power which the King giveth and not which the investing Minister describeth If a Parson presented to a Benefice shall be told by the Bishop at his institution the Tithes or Glebe are but half yours this shall not diminish his Title to the whole So when God hath described the Ministers office it shall be what God saith it is and not what the Ordainer saith it is And God maketh the Pastors of each particular body of fixed Communicants united as aforesaid to be really a Bishop or at least the chief of these Pastors or the sole Pastor And therefore the Church to be truly and univocally a Church of Divine institution Though it were never so much granted that Archbishops were over them as the Apostles were overthose Acts 14. 23. And then when the Parish Churches are once proved true Churches whether the Diocesane be so or not is nothing to our controversie with the Separatists But for my part I cannot confute the lawfulness of a Diocese as consisting of many particular Churches with their Bishops as I can a Diocese which hath put them all down CHAP. IX The second Argument from the Deposition of the primitive species of Bishops and the erecting of a humane inconsistent species in their stead A specifick difference proved ARGUMENT II. A Humane inconsistent species of Bishops erected instead of the Divinely-instituted species thereby deposed is unlawful But such is the Diocesan species now opposed Ergo. I have hitherto charged it with the changing of the Church Form Now of the
on I did all that I promised presently with telling them You know that the Parliament take Independency to be a sin and they will say If we allow or tolerate them they here pronounce the sentence of damnation on us under their own hands Dictum factum we had no more of that fundamental I have greater confidence of prevailing with Diocesans by such an argument In taking the Covenant in the Westminster Assembly it would not pass till the parenthesis describing the English species of Prelacy was inserted because many declared that they were not against all Episcopacy but only the present English species Accordingly those that took the Covenant in that sense take not themselves bound to endeavour the extirpation of all Episcopacy but only of that species And they that would have conformed on the terms of the Kings Declaration about Ecclesiastical Affairs went on this supposition that the species of Prelacy was altered by it Now I put these questions to the Diocesans Quest 1. If a Usurper by power should take down all the Diocesans and their lands Lordships and Courts and turn them into Parish Bishops and say I alter not the species but the degree would they believe him Quest 2. If one that thinketh himself obliged by the Vow or Covenant against this species only should think that he answereth his obligation if he procure no other alteration than is made in the Kings forenamed Declaration would they tell him You alter not the species unless you totally extirpate Episcopacy supposing that he had power to do it Quest 3. Seeing most that we speak with who conform and who take or plead for the Oxford Oath Never to endeavour any alteration of Church Government do tell us that the meaning is only that we will not endeavour to alter the present species which is Episcopacy and not the appurtenances as Chancellors c. I ask If it should please the King to take down all Diocesanes and to set up only a Bishop in every Parish or Independent Church say I change not the species or if I believed that this were a Change of the English species of Church Government I would not do it what answer would they give to this Quest 4. If a Conformist or one that hath taken that Oath shall say I did subscribe and swear only not to endeavour an alteration of the species but not of the degree Therefore I will do all that I can to take down Diocesans and to set up Congregational or Parochial Bishops in their stead will you tell this man that indeed by so doing he endeavoureth not to change the species Quest 5. Seeing many of the greatest opposers of Prelacy do consent to a Congregational or Parochial Bishop will you grant that these are not at all your adversaries as to the species of Church Government but only as to the degree or extent of Dioceses These cases are practical Therefore take heed how you resolve them left you do that which you are unwilling of Quest 6. And I may ask Why is it that many deny that it was a Parliament of Episcopal men that raised the Army against the King only because in the Proposition sent to Nottingham they would have had Episcopacy reduced to what is there intimated and would have had their power shortned Come come deny not the plain truth If magis minus non variant speciem Parliament men yea and the Learnedest part of that Synod who took down Bishops were Episcopal men yea Prelatists as you are for they were but for a Gradual alteration at the beginning of their war till they were carried further by necessity and interest Quest 7. And I ask you also why and with what front do you call us all Presbyterians who offered Bishop Ushers Model to the King and you in 1660. as the terms of Concord Is it against your Consciences meerly to make us odious with you know whom what can it be better if you grant that we are not only for Episcopacy in genere but even for the same species with your selves Yea those that are against Bishop Ushers Model and are only for Congregational or Parish Bishops are it seemeth even for your species And are they not then Episcopal as well as you So much ad hominem now ad rem II. Where the specifying Ends differ there the Species of Relations differ But in the Churches and the Bishops in question the specifying Ends differ Ergo c. I will first manifest the truth of the Minor for the Major is unquestionable of Churches and next of Bishops 1. The ends of a particular Church as described by us are these 1. Communion sensible and external 2. And that local or presential 3. And that personal by all the body of the Church 4. And that in the same Individual acts of Gods publick worship 5. In watching over or helping each other towards Heaven by provoking each other to love and to good works and if a brother offend to tell him of his fault to comfort each other and to live together in holiness love and peace 6. To be related to the same Pastors as those that are their Ordinary Teachers Governours and Guides in publick worship as labouring amongst them and being ensamples to the flock 7. To hold a distant Communion with the neighbour associated concordant Churches and particularly with those nearest them of the first order of Composition of which association this particular Church is a part for Communion of Churches as they are themselves a Society for Communion of Individual Christians in a single Church 2. Now the ends of our Diocesane Churches are not one of all these For 1. Their Communion is internal in Faith and Love such as we have with the Abassines 2. It is distant only and not presential at all For as Diocesane we never see each other it's like in our whole lives 3. It is not personal as external and sensible but only by the intervention of Delegates Messengers Officers or Synods of such 4. It is only in eadem specie of publick worship and sacred actions that we have Communion but not in the same Individual actions of worship And so we may have Communion with the Antipodes while we believe the same Scriptures and Creed and use the same Sacraments c. in specie 5. We have no converse with one another at all as Diocesane though as Parochial we may we never meet together pray together hear together exhort or watch over or help each other If a Brother trespass we tell him not of his fault c. for we never know one of five hundred in the Diocese no more than men of another Countrey 6. We hear not the same Teachers we have not the same Guides to resolve our doubts and to instruct us as we need We have not the same Priests to joyn with in Gods publick worship But he that Teacheth and officiateth in one Church hath no power in another Only we have the same
shall there tell him whom to Baptize where there is no Bishop And the power of Baptizing is the first and greatest Key of the Church even the Key of admission And they that do among us deny a Presbyter the power of judging whom to Baptize and give the Lords Supper to do not give it to the Bishop who knoweth not of the persons But the Directive part they commit to a Convocation of Bishops and Presbyters and the Judicial partly to the Priest and partly to a Lay-Chancellor X. Epiphanius Haeres 75. saith The Apostles did not set all in full order at once And at first there was need of Presbyters and Deacons by whom both Ecclesiastical affairs may be administred Therefore where no man was found worthy of Episcopacy in that place no Bishop was set By which it appeareth that he thought that for some time some Churches were Governed without Bishops And if so it there belonged to the Presbyters office to govern Whereto we may add the opinion of many Episcopal men who think that during the Apostles times they were the only Bishops in most Churches themselves And if so Then in their long and frequent absence the Presbyters must be the governours XI That many Councils have had Presbyters yea many of them is past doubt Look but in the Councils subscriptions and you will see it A Synod of some Bishops and more Presbyters and Deacons gathered at Rome decreed the Excommunication of Novatianus and his adherents Euseb lib. 6. c. 43. Noetus was convented judged expelled by the Session of Presbyters Epiphan Haeres 47. c. 1. See a great number of instances of Councils held by Bishops with their Presbyters in Blondel de Episc sect 3. p. 202. Yea one was held at Rome praesidentibus cum Joanne 12 Presbyteris An. 964. vid. Blond p. 203 206 207. Yea they had places and votes in General Councils Not only ut aliorum procuratores as Victor and Vincentius in Nic. 1. but as the Pastors of their Churches and in their proper right I need not urge Selden's Arabick Catalogue in Eutych Alex. where there were two persons for divers particular places or Zonaras who saith There were Priests Deacons and Monks nor Athanasius a Deacon's presence Evenof late the Council of Basil is a sufficient proof XII The foresaid Canons of Carthage which are so full are inserted into the body of the Canon Law and in the Canons of Egbert Archbishop of York as Bishop Usher and others have observed XXIII Hierom's Communi Presbyterorum Concilio Ecclesiae gubernabantur seconded by Chrysostome and other Fathers is a trite but evident testimony XIV That Presbyters had the Power of Excommunications see fully proved by Calderwood Altar Damasc p. 273. XV. Basil's Anaphora Bibl. Pat. Tom. 6. p. 22. maketh every Church to have Archpresbyters Presbyters and Deacons making the Bishop to be but the Archpresbyter CHAP. XIV The Confessions of the greatest and Learnedest Prelatists 1. THe Church of England doth publickly notifie her judgment that Church Government Discipline and the power of the Keys is not a thing aliene from or above the Order of the Presbyters but belongeth to their office 1. In that they allow Presbyters to be members of Convocations and that as chosen by the Presbyters And whereas it is said that the Lower house of Convocation are but Advisers to the Upper I answer All together have but an advising power to the King and Parliament But in that sort of power the lower house hath its part as experience sheweth 2. There are many exempt Jurisdictions in England as the Kings Chappel The Deanry of Windsor and Wolverhampton Bridgenorth where six Parishes are governed by a Court held by a Presbyter and many more which shew that it is consistent with the Presbyters office 3. The Archdeacons who are no Bishops exercise some Government And so do their Officials under them The Objection from Deputation is answered 4. The Surrogates of the Bishops whether Vicar General Principal Official or Commissaries are allowed a certain part of government 5. They that give Lay-Chancellors the power of Judicial Excommunication and Absolution cannot think a Presbyter uncapable of it 6. A Presbyter proforma oft passeth the sentence of Excommunication and Absolution in the Chancellors Court when he hath judged it 7. A Presbyter in the Church must publish that Excommunication and Absolution 8. By allowing Presbyters to baptize and to deliver the Lords Supper and to keep some back for that time and to admit them again if they openly profess to repent and amend their naughty lives and to absolve the sick they intimate that the Power of the Keys belongeth to them though they contradict themselves otherwise by denying it them 9. And in Ordination the Presbyter is required to exercise discipline And the words of Act. 20. 28. were formerly used to them Take heed to your selves and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you Overseers or Bishops to feed or Rule the Church of God Whence Bishop Usher gathereth that the Churches sence was that the Presbyters had a joynt power with the Bishop in Church Government And though lately Anno 1662. this be altered and those words left out yet it is not any such new change that can disprove this to have been the meaning of them that made the book of Ordination and that used it II. Archbishop Cranmer with the rest of the Commissioners appointed by King Edward the Sixth for the Reformation of Ecclesiastical Laws decreed the administring Discipline in every Parish by the Minister and certain Elders Labouring and intending by all means to bring in the ancient discipline Vid. Reform Leg. Eccles tit de Divinis Officiis cap. 10. And our Liturgy wisheth this Godly Discipline restored and substituteth the Curses till it can be done And the same Cranmer was the first of 46 who in the time of King Henry the Eighth affirmed in a book called The Bishops Book to be seen in Fox's Martyrology that the difference of Bishops was a device of the ancient Fathers and not mentioned in Scripture And of the opinion of Cranmer with others in this point his own papers published by Dr. Stillingfleet Irenic p. 390 391 c. are so full a proof that no more is needful III. Dr. Richard Cosins in his Tables sheweth how Church Discipline is partly exercised by Presbyters and by the Kings Commission may be much more And it is not aliene to their office IV. Hooker Eccles Pol. lib. 5. pleadeth against the Divine settlement of one form of Government And lib. 7. Sect. 7. p. 17 18. he sheweth at large that the Bishops with their Presbyters as a Consess governed the Churches And that in this respect It is most certain truth that the Churches Cathedral and the Bishops of them are as glasses wherein the face and very countenance of Apostolical antiquity remaineth yet to be seen notwithstanding the alterations which tract of time and course of the world hath
brought And much he hath elsewhere which granteth that the Presbyters are Church governours though not in equality with the Bishops V. Dr. Field lib. 5. c. 27. shewing how the Apostles first limiting and fixing of Pastors to particular Churches was a giving them Jurisdiction saith this assigning to men having the power of order the persons to whom they were to minister holy things and of whom they were to take the care and the subjecting of such persons to them gave them the power of Jurisdiction which they had not before And As another of my Rank cannot have that Jurisdiction within my Church as I have but if he will have any thing to do there he must be inferiour in degree to me so we read in the Revelation of the Angel of the Church of Ephesus c. So that with him a Bishop is but one of the Presbyters of the same Rank having the first charge of the Church as every Incumbent in respect to his Curates and so above his Curates in Degree And As the Presbyters may do nothing without the Bishop so he may do nothing in matters of greatest moment without their presence and advice Conc. Carthag 4. c. 23. It is therefore most false that Bellarmine saith that Presbyters have no power of Jurisdiction For it is most clear and evident that in all Provincial Synods Presbyters did sit give voices and subscribe as well as Bishops And the Bishops that were present in General Councils bringing the resolution and consent of the provincial Synods of those Churches from whence they came in which Synods Presbyters had their voices they had a kind of consent to the decrees of General Councils also and nothing was passed in them without their concurrence And Chap. 49. The Papists think that this is the peculiar right of Bishops But they are clearly refuted by the universal practice of the whole Church from the beginning For in all Provincial and National Synods Presbyters did ever give voice and subscribe in the very same sort that Bishops did whether they were assembled to make Canons of Discipline to hear Causes or to define doubtful points of doctrine And that they did not anciently sit and give decisive voices in General Councils the reason was not because they have no interest in such deliberations and resolutions but because seeing all cannot meet in Councils that have interest in such business â—but some must be deputed for and authorized by the rest it was thought fit that the Bishops So here are Bishops authorized by Presbyters as their Deputies in the greatest affairs in General Councils He proceedeth to prove this by instances Concil Later sub Innoc. 3. c. VI. Even Archbishop Whitgift maintaineth as Doctor Stillingfleet hath collected Iren. pag. 394. that No kind of Government is expressed in the word or can necessarily be concluded thence No form of Church Government is by the Scriptures commanded to the Church of God or prescribed And Doctor Stillingfleet there citeth many testimonies to prove this the judgment of the Church of England And if so it must be only men and not God who make any difference between a Presbyter and a Bishop in the point of Jurisdiction VII Bishop Bilson Perpet Govern p. 16. c. 391. saith The Synod of Antioch which deposed Paulus Samosat as Eusebius sheweth lib. 7. c. 38. in Concil Eliber about the time of the first Nicene Council sate Bishops and Presbyters even 36. In the second Concil Arelat About the same time subscribed twelve Presbyters besides Deacons So in Concil Rom. sub Hilario Gregor where 34 Presbyters subscribed after 22 Bishops And in the first sub Symmach where after 72 Bishops subscribed 67 Presbyters So in the third fifth and sixth under the same Symmachus Felix had a council of 43 Bishops and 74 Presbyters The Concil Antisiod c 7. saith Let all the Presbyters being called come to the Synod in the City Concil Tolet. 4. c. 3. saith Let the Bishops assembled go to the Church together and sit according to the time of their Ordination After all the Bishops are entred and set let the Presbyters be called and the Bishops sitting in a compass let the Presbyters sit behind them and the Deacons stand before them Even in the General Council at Lateran sub Innoc. 3. were 482 Bishops and 800 Abbots and Priors conventual saith Platina Thus Bilson and more VIII To the same purpose writeth the Greatest Defender of Prelacy Bishop Downam Def. lib. 1. c. 2. sect 11. pag. 43 44. and the places before cited out of him professing that the Bishop hath but a chief and not sole jurisdiction IX Bishop Ushers judgment is fully opened in his Model which we offered to the King and Bishops in vain and which he owned to me with his own mouth X. Because the citing of mens words is tedious I add that All those whom I cited Christ Concord p. 57 c. to shew that they judge the Presbyters Ordination may be lawful and valid do much more thereby infer that they are not void of a Governing power over their own flocks viz. 1. Dr. Field lib. 3. c. 32. 2. Bishop Downam Def. lib. 3. c. 4. p. 108. 3. Bishop Jewel Def. of Apol. Part 2. p. 131. 4. Saravia De divers Min. Grad cap. p. 10 11. 5. Bishop Alley Poor mans Libr. Prelect 3. 6. p. 95 96. 6. Bishop Pilkington 7. Bishop Bridges 8. Bishop Bilson Of Subject p. 540 541 542 233 234 c. 9. Alex. Nowel 10. Grotius de imper 11. Mr. Chisenhall 12. Lord Digby then a Protestant 13. Bishop Davenant Determ Q. 42. p. 191 192. 14. Bishop Prideaux cont de Disciplin Eccles p. 249. 15. Bishop Andrews 16. Chillingworth To which I add 17. Bishop Bramhall in his Answer to Mileterius's Epistle to the King 18. Dr. Steward's Answer to Fountains Letter 19. Dr. Fern. 20. Mason at large 21. Bishop Morton Apolog. XI Spalatensis is large to prove the power of the Keys to belong in common to Presbyters as such I cited the words before Lib. 5. c. 9. n. 2. c. 2. n. 48 c. XII Even Gropperus the Papist pleadeth in the Council of Trent for the restoring of Synods of Presbyters instead of Officials the thing so much detested in England as that all we undergo must rather be endured yet saith Gropperus Restore the Synodals which are not subject to so great corruption removing those Officers by whom the world is so much scandalized because it is not possible that Germany should endure them The Spaniards and Dutch men willingly heard this but not the rest Hist p. 334. lib. 4. XIII The opinion of Paulus himself the author of that History is so fully and excellently laid down of the Original of the Bishops grandeur and of the manner of introducing the Ecclesiastical Courts by the occasion of Pacifications Arbitrations and Constantines Edict as that I intreat the Reader to turn to and peruse p. 330 331
administration of the Sacraments and no other Canon 36. Mark No other And the Bishops that endure this are forced to say that these Pulpit prayers are not the Churches prayers but our own But yet they are Publick prayers and therefore I doubt a breach of the Canon-Covenant 7. A Presbyter as such hath no power to preach the Gospel The words of his Ordination do but give him power to preach when he shall be lawfully called yea his Presentation Institution Induction and possession of a Pastoral Charge do not all make up this Lawful call nor may he preach one Sermon after all this till he have a particular Licensing Instrument from the Bishop So that he preacheth not meerly as a Presbyter nor as a possessed Incumbent but as Licensed by the Bishop 8. When he visiteth the sick he hath no Power left him to judge Whether the person be penitent and fit to be Absolved or not But if the wickedest liver will but say or swear that he repenteth of Swearing of Adultery of Perjury though such expressions or circumstances be such as plainly tell a present Minister that he hath nothing like to a serious repentance yet must this Minister be forced even in Absolute words to Absolve him from all his sins When a Popish Confessor would require more I do not in all this lay the fault that this Minister hath not power to keep away any of these persons from Baptism Confirmation the Lords Table Absolution c. but only that he hath no Power to forbear his own action and application and leave them to others that are satisfied to do it Nor not so much as to delay till he give a reason of his doubt to his Lord Bishop 9. When he buryeth the dead he hath no power to judge so far as to the performing or restraining of his own act whether the deceased person must needs be declared and pronounced blessed Three sorts of persons he must deny Christian burial to 1. Those that die unbaptized though they be the Children of the holiest Parents 2. Those that kill themselves though they be the faithfullest persons of godly and blameless lives who do it in melancholy deliration a phrenzy feaver or distraction 3. All that are Excommunicate though by a Lay Chancellor for not paying their fees or though it be because they durst not take the Sacrament from the hands of an ignorant ungodly drunken Priest to whose ministery neither they nor other of the Parish did ever consent or that it be the Learnedest Godly Divine that is excommunicate for dissenting from the Prelatists But all others without any exception that are brought to Church they must bury with a publick Declaration that they are saints viz. That God in mercy hath taken to himself the soul of this our dear brother And without Holiness no man shall see God So great difference in Holiness there is between the Holy Church of Rome and ours that they Canonize one Saint in an age by the Pope and we as many as are buryed by the Priest Though it was the most notorious Thief or Murderer or the most notorious Atheist or Infidel or Heretick who either writeth or preacheth or disputeth that there is no God or no life to come or useth in his ordinary talk to mock at Christ as a deceiver and to scorn the Scriptures as nonsence and contradiction or though it be a Jew who professeth enmity to Christ Much more if it be a common blasphemer perjured person adulterer drunkard a scorner at a godly life c. who never professed repentance but despised the Minister and his counsel to the last breath yet if he be brought to the Church for buryal the Priest must pronounce him saved in the aforesaid words so be it he be not Excommunicate of which sort of late there are too great numbers risen up in so much that the sober Prelatists themselves cry out of the growth and peril of Atheism Infidelity and most horrid filthiness and profaneness The words of the Canon are Can 68. No Minister shall refuse or delay to bury any corps that is brought to the Church or Churchyard convenient warning being given thereof before in such manner and form as is prescribed in the book of Common Prayer And if he shall refuse except the party deceased were denounced Excommunicated Excommunicatione majori for some grievous and notorious crime and no man able to testifie of his repentance he shall be suspended by the Bishop of the Diocese from his Ministry by the space of three months But the New Rubrick in the Liturgy saith The office ensuing is not to be used for any that die unbaptized or Excommunicate or have laid violent hands on themselves The Office saith Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the Soul of our dear brother here departed c. And We give thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world And yet as self-contradicters and condemners if any man do but say of one that hath been openly against the Prelates or Conformity that he was a godly honest man much more one that was against the King and especially a downright Traitor who so lived and died impenitently they take it for a heinous crime as in the latter case they well may do And yet except those whose quarters they set up upon the gates or deny Christian burial to by the Magistrate the poor Priest must pronounce them all at the Grave to be the Bishops dear brethren and saved as aforesaid 10. They have no Power to give the Sacrament of Communion with Christ and his Church to any the most Learned holy Christian who dare not receive the Sacrament kneeling for fear of bread-worship in appearance c. which though I think is unwarrantably scrupled yet hath so much of Universality and Antiquity as maketh it ill beseeming those same men who cry up the Church Councils Customes and Antiquity to cast out of Communion those that conform to all these for so doing For who knoweth not by Can. 20. of Concil Nic. 1. and the consent of Antiquity that they took it for a custome and tradition and Canon of the Universal Church that none should at all adore God kneeling on any Lords day in the year nor on any week-day between Easter and Whitsunday 11. They have no power to forbear denying the Sacrament of Communion to any how faithful and holy soever who is against the Diocesanes Confirmation and is unwilling that those whom he taketh to be no true Bishops should use that which he taketh as used by them to be no true Ordinance of God but a taking of his name in vain or if on any other account he be unwilling of it For the new Rubrick is There shall none be admitted to the holy Communion until such time as he be Confirmed or be ready and desirous to be Confirmed So that
it is not actual confirmation which they think necessary But a Desire of Confirmation by the imposition of the Diocesanes hands is made a thing necessary to Christian Church Communion 12. As it is before said that he hath no power to judge who shall be Confirmed and admitted into the Rank of Communicating members so he hath no power at all effectually to keep away the grossest offenders or to forbear his own actual putting the Sacrament into their hands For though the Canon seem to favour his power and the Rubrick say somewhat the same way yet it is to be noted 1. That whereas the Rubrick alloweth him to advertise the scandalous not to come to the Sacrament yet it is only the contentious that have injured others and are not reconciled whom he is plainly enabled to refuse 2. Among those that he may advertise not to come the grosly ignorant who know not what Christ or the Sacrament is the Atheist Infidel and Heretick are not numbred at all but an open and notorious evil liver or that hath done wrong to his neighbours 3. And if he be never so wicked yet unless also The Congregation be thereby offended the Curate cannot hinder him or so much as advertise him not to come And so if only a few Godly persons be offended they are not the Congregation or if the Minor part be offended they are not the Congregation And how shall the Minister know whether the Major part be offended For he hath no power to ask them much less to put it to the Vote And the Major part will never come to him nor be accusers And if the Major part which is no wonder be themselves so Ignorant Heretical or ungodly as not to be offended but rather to take the Sinners part then the Curate must give them all the Sacrament and hath no remedy 4. And he that must not live in Taverns Alehouses Play-houses or other places of wickedness specially if he live as Chrysostome did who never did so much as eat with any one in his own house may have most of his Communicants to be abominable and flagitious before it will be Notorious to him for as is said He hath no power to call any to witness any thing that are unwilling And few will be willing to enrage their neighbours when they foreknow that it will do more hurt than good 5. And if he do refuse any one he is bound to become an Informer and to give an account of the same to the Ordinary within fouteen days at the farthest Whenas 1. Perhaps he may dwell many score miles off 2. And have his studies and all other business on his hands 3. And must then bring his proofs when he is not enabled to examine any witness nor take proof of that which to all others is notorious 4. It is a great doubt whether the Sinner have not his remedy at Law against him to his undoing if he lay not by all his other business to prosecute the proof to the utmost And if he do lay by the rest of his work that while the Bishop may undoe him or suspend him 5. By this means he shall more exasperate the Sinners by prosecuting them to such a Court as the Prelates and harden them against all profiting by his Ministry than if by his Pastoral office he had himself first lovingly convinced them and suspended them only till they repent 6. When he hath all done if the sinner pay his fees and say He repenteth the Chancellor is to Absolve him And so the Curate doth only to his own vexation and the Sinners hurt deny him the Sacrament but once And if the wrath or scorns of the Sinner shew that he was far from true Repentance the Curate cannot deny him the Sacrament the next day nor ever after till he not only again commit the same sin Adultery Perjury Drunkenness c. but till it be again notorious and he will be again at the same trouble in the prosecution 7. And there are few great Parishes in England where there are no Swearers Drunkards Railers Fighters Fornicators Adulterers and such like enow to hold a Curate work through the whole year to prosecute them though he lay by almost all his other work so that by this way if he keep such from the Sacrament he must keep all away by ceasing his Ministerial work 8. The Curate cannot refuse him till he hath called and advertised him whereas the person may refuse to come to him at least by pretending business and other excuses All these things make this which seemeth his most considerable power to be in effect but next to none 13. The Curate hath no power when any person is obstinate and impenitent in the most notorious scandal or heresie or endeavoureth to pervert others to admonish him before all that others may beware nor to call him openly to Repentance 14. Nor hath he any power to judge who shall be Excommunicated as impenitent be the crime never so heinous or notorious no not so much as to concur in this power with any Bishop Chancellor or Presbyters any more than any Lay-man hath He can but Accuse them and so may an Apparitor or Church-warden or Read the Bishops or Chancellors Excommunication as he doth the Kings Proclamations or as the Clerk doth other writings 15. He hath no power to absolve publickly any person Excommunicated no more than a Lay man but as aforesaid to read the Absolution 16. He hath no power to forbear his own act of Reading an Excommunication against the faithfullest and most religious persons in his Parish whom it shall please the Bishop or Chancellor to Excommunicate that is usually a Nonconformist or a Churchwarden who dare not swear to their large books of Articles to persecute the Nonconformists c. or one that appeareth not at their Courts or a poor man that doth not pay their fees c. The poor Curate must read the Curse against them 17. He hath no power himself to forbear the open Reading of an Absolution of the most impenitent wicked man whom it shall please the Chancellor to absolve And how easily that is procured for any man that is but Rich and Conformable is well known 18. The Curate hath no power so much as to Baptize the holiest believer or the Child of such as do but fear lest it be a Sin to use the Transient Image of the Cross as a humane symbol of Christianity and an engaging dedicating sign that he will not be ashamed to profess the faith of Christ crucified and manfully to fight under his banner against the Devil the world and the flesh and to continue Christs faithful servant and souldier to his lifes end If the person to be baptized were a Turk or a Jew who both hate Idolatry and should be so scandalized at this Transient Image and humane Symbol as that they would rather never be Christians or be Baptized than receive it yet must the poor Priest let
day 3. The remaining respects which the people had to the Prelates and their way was a hinderance to us that desired to meddle herein with none but consenters 4. A great number of Sectaries raised by the distastes of the Prelates wayes did also hinder us 5. Yet it was than possible and feasible to Ministers that were wise and willing to do so much as might very much attain the ends of discipline though not so much as they desired 6. But is this an Objection fit for the Prelatists to make or doth it not encrease their condemnation what would you say to a Physician a Pilot a Schoolmaster that should say It is not an hundred Physicians that can do what should be done for all the Patients in this City nor an hundred Pilots that can well govern all the Navy nor an hundred School masters that can well Govern all the Schools in the Diocess Therefore I will get them all turned out and I will be the only Physician with my Apothecaries the only Pilot with my Sâ—amâ—n the only Schoolmaster with my Monitors and Ushers my self for the work can be but left undone Such rule the Churches must have while God for our sins will suffer it The doing it per alios is oft enough answered before Obj. V. Many Parish Ministers are young and raw and unfit to govern Ans 1. They are unfit who make this Objection who bring and keep such in and cast so many hundred out that are better however ignorant malice slander them 2. This also may be said against their preaching much more For 3. They may Rule with others when they cannot preach by others 4. There may be appeals to the next Synod or Prelate if you will have it so Obj. VI. You would have a Priest to be a Pope in his Parish Ans I can call this Objection no better than gross Impudency For 1. It s a Contradiction A Pope is a Head of the Universal Church And so it is saying that we make every Minister a Head of the Universal Church to his Parish 2. We desire more Presbyters than One in a Church 3. We desire Appeals to the next Synod and is that to be a Pope 4. Is not one Minister as able to Rule a Parish without the help of assistants and Synods as one Prelate to Rule many hundred Parishes who likely is a worse man than the Minister Impudent pride will perhaps say no. CHAP. XXI The Magistrates Sword is neither the strength of Church discipline nor will serve instead of it nor should be too much used to second and enforce it THese three assertions I will prove distinctly 1. The Magistrates Sword is not the chief strength of true Church discipline I add this because this is the Prelatists last Objection that its true that the Keys are but brutum fulmen and a leaden sword without the Magistrates For almost all men will dispise it Who will come to our Courts if they may choose Who will regard our Excommunications Do not the people now despise them what then would they do if they had their wills when we have excommunicated the Schismaticks They will Excommunicate us again The greatest Prelatists who write to me and speak with me use these very words themselves To which I answer 1. If we prove that Christ hath instituted discipline and that for such noble ends as aforementioned it is little less than blasphemy thus to reproach it As if Christ had no more Power Wisdome or Goodness than to ordain so vain and unprofitable a means to such high and necessary ends 2. The objection doth but express a carnal mind which regardeth only carnal things and thinketh as basely of all others as if nothing moved them but the interest of the flesh And as if Gods favour or displeasure and the authority of his word and Ministers were of no force or regard even with the Church of Christ 3. The objection inviteth Kings to put down all Bishops except Preachers and Magistrates For why should they put the people to so great charge and trouble especially when they love the Prelates so little as to keep them up to wield a Leaden Sword and to brandish a brutum fulmen and to make a noise to no more purpose yea to rob the Magistrate of the honour of his proper work and to make the deluded people believe that those things are done by a brutum fulmen which really are done by the Civil power 4. This objection bitterly reproacheth all the ancient Churches and Bishops and all General and provincical Councils and all the Cannons and ancient discipline of the Churches As if they had troubled the world to no pupose and all their discipline had been vain 5. The objection is notoriously confuted in that the Discipline was more powerful and had better effect before Constantius time than afterwards and was much more strictly exercised against sin And that which so long did more without the Sword than afterward by it doth not receive its efficacy from the Sword 6. A naturarei there is as much of Divine Authority as much of the power of his Precepts Prohibitions Promises and threatnings as much of Heavenly inducement as much of the terrors of Hell as much of internal goodness of holyness and evil of sins as much of Soul interest in what the Minister propoundeth for mens conviction as there is when it is backt with the Magistrates Sword And if all these have no force Christianity must be a dream and able to do no good in the world which better beseemeth Julian Celsuâ— or Porphyry Symmachus or Eunapius to say than a Bishop 7. By this objection the Prelatists openly confess that their Churches consist of men so carnal as are not moved by Divine authority without the Sword And consequently what Pastors they have been to the Churches and how they have governed them and what they allow us to expect from their discipline for the time to come 8. By this Objection they condemn themselves and justifie the Nonconformists For why should we Swear that we will never endeavour any alteration of so brutish an Office as if the King and Parliament could not take down such an useless thing And why should so many hundred Ministers be forbidden to Preach Christ for not assenting consenting and Swearing to such a vaine and brutish power 9. By this they give up their cause to the Presbyterians and Independents Confessing that their discipline is uneffectual when as we that plead for another frame desire not the Magistrates Sword to interpose and desire to use discipline on none but Volunteers And either the discipline which we desire hath some efficacy or none If none what need they fear it or hinder it or silence so many hundred Ministers and write and strive and all to keep men from using such a brutum fulmen which can do no harme But if they confess that our discipline hath efficacy and theirs hath none what do they but directly
unworthy to have Communion with any orderly well governed Congregation of believers because of their loose and scandalous manner of living which because they could not redresse they did pretend at least they were bound thus to shun and avoid as hateful to God and to good men Wherefore ye did not carefully seperate between the precious and the vile but consulting with flesh and blood what ye were to do in this case thought in humane Policy to break the power of one party by strengthening the hands of the other or not binding and restraining them with the Cords of Ecclesiasticall discipline Thus while you opposed Profaneness against Schism or did let that loose at this or secretly favoured and upheld it in hope to suppresse the later by the former the one grew too strong by the violence of opposition for your selves and both for the Church in order to peace and holiness As for your labour in the work of the Ministry how little it hath been for many years together it is even a shame to mention some of you wholly exempting your selves from this necessary burden of their calling for ease and pleasure Others supposing it a task and employment too low and inferiour for them The rest for the most part slightly or seldome bearing it with their shoulders and laying it aside presently as that which concerned other men and not themselves any longer than they listed And thus far had been pardonable with men had care been taken to see this work duely performed by the Clergy But alas there were not wanting of you who did not only wink at the wilful neglect of their inferirour bretheren in this point of Ministerial duty But did countenance and favour such as were most peccant therein judging them most averse from faction who were least conscious Of Preaching to the peole and fairest friends to the present Government who were loose enough God knoweth in their office and conversation Whence it came to pass that very many who were for you in the time of Tryal were ignorant and dissolute men dishonourable to your party and indeed to the Christian Religion which they did continually profane by their words and workes So unsuitable is humane policy with Evangelical simplicity and unsuccesful when it is used to support the regiment thereof And instead of sending forth meet Labourers into the Lords harvest fit Pastors into his flock you sent those that were idle Shephards loving to slumber given to sleep altogether like your selves careless of the Lords Heritage either unwilling if able or if willing unable or neither willing nor able rightly to divide the word of truth giving them their portion in due season As for those to whom God had given both ability and will to preach the word ye permitted them not the free use and exercise of their gifts but forbade them to teach the people as oft as they saw it convenient or necessary for their Edification And though you did at first commend to them the way of Catechizing the younger sort yet afterwards I know not upon what grounds or for what reason you so far limited and restrained the Minister in this pious and profitable practice that ye did in a manner take away the key of knowledge or make it useless for them so that they could not enter in thereby And pag. 69. of this I am assured that nothing was reformed afterward in your ordinations it being as free and indifferent for all who came as ever p. 70. 71. 72. The like excuse some frame for the gross corruptions of your prerogative Courts for commutations unjust partial and unreasonable Censures of Excommunication for unlawful to say no more suspension of the meaner sort from ordinances of Jesus Christ for non payment or rather disability of paying pecuniary mulcts and fees imposed on them and without Equity exacted of them by your prophane and greedy officers They pretend the power of the Chancellour to be distinct and separate from that of the Bishop in many points of spiritual Jurisdiction and so exempt from it and uncontroulable by it however proving illegal and exorbitant in the proceedings there of And surely it may seem strange to any considerate person that ye who did so much strain your authority for the introuducing of new Ceremonies into the Church of Christ savouring of superstition and begetting jealousies in mens minds of Popish innovations intended by you without prudence or Conscience and used it so rigorously for the enforcing of the old upon many ill affected to the observation of them absolutely requiring conformity to the Church Liturgy in every point of all men notwithstanding rebus sic stantibus profligata disciplina some former thereof were not appliable to divers persons would not extend it to the utmost measure for the rectifying those great abuses which had by insensible degrees crept in and corrupted the true Primitive discipline But Court employments State flattery and sinful Complyances with great persons were the main lets which hindred you from the due discharge of your office both in preaching the word and exercising the Rod of Christ according to his mind and will while ye thought in carnal reason such means as these most effectual for the acquiring and retaining of your greatness and despised those which the prudent simplicity of the Gospel did offer and commend unto you Wherefore it is no wonder if vice did reign there where flattery did abound and that in the chief Ministers and Messengers of truth if injustice and oppression did bear sway If men were secure in their sins where peace was proclaimed where a prophane Company heard nothing for the most part decried in the Pulpit but Faction from which perhaps alone they were free And what could be expected from the common people but blind ignorance love of pleasures more than God when ye their chief Leaders caused them to err not only through your negligence but also by your example And I would to God some of you had not proved false and deceitful to your brethren whom ye perverted from the way of truth and peace by your own departing from it continuing fast friends to the world ye were carnal your selves and walked as men shewing them the way to heaven with hearts and eyes fixed upon earth For who more immoderate in their care for the things of this life than you Who more eager in the pursuit of riches and honor more tenacious in withholding good from the owners thereof than your selves Who were more set upon the usual course of enriching above measure and raising your families on high If a dignity or office fell within the Compass of your Diocess who was presently judged of you more worthy to possess and manage it than a Son or a Nephew or a Kin'man or an Allie though they were many times altogether uncapable of the honor and trust to which ye preferred them in the house of God either they wanted ability of