ordeining others It does not follow from the Notions of those times § VII Nor from the reason of the thing § VIII IX The Principles on which these Persons proceeded in making on◠Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery did not oblige them to believe that the Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters § X XI XII XIII XIV Answ. 4. They who then held this Opinion did in all likelihood neither intend nor think of any consequence from it prejudicial to the establishments then received § XV XVI p. 491. CHAP. XXIV This supposition That the Bishops had the right of Presiding over Ecclesiastical Assemblies sufficient for our purpose § I. 1. In regard of that Power which must be granted due to him even as President This proved by these degrees 1. Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no Power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated § II. 2. No act can be presumed to be the act of that Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies § III. 3. No Assemblies can dispose of the right of such Societies but such as are Lawful ones according to the constitutions of the Societies § IV V. 4. The Indiction of the Assembly by the President is a right consequent to the Office of a President as a President and a circumstance requisite to make the Assembly it self Lawful § VI VII 5. The Bishops have always been the Presidents of Ecclesiastical Assemblies even as high as our Adversaries themselves do grant the practice of Presiding Presbyters § VIII IX This invalidates the Orders of our Adversaries § X. This was a right which no Bishops how great Assertors soever of the Identity of their Order with that of Presbyters ever did renounce or could renounce without making their Government unpracticable § XI Though the Bishops had received their Power from their Election by men yet that would not suffice to make valid any acts of the same men without their consent after their Election § XII XIII This right of Presidency might hold though the whole right of their Power had been purely Humane § XIV But supposing that right Divine all that men can do can be only to determine the Person not to confine the Power The reasoning here used will proceed though Bishops had been made by Presbyters alone without the concurrence and consecration of other Bishops § XV. The Primitive Bishops seem indeed to have been made so by Presbyters without Bishops § XVI p. 508. CHAP. XXV 2. The Nullity of the same Ordinations proved even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government from the right which Episcopal Presbyteries ought to have in giving Orders as they are considered as Presbyteries § I II. This proved by these degrees Though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is the correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination § III IV V VI. 2. Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in whith he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the Exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them § VII 3. The Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders Applied to single Presbyters § VIII To whole Presbyteries made up of over-voted single Presbyters § IX X XI 4. No Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in any particular Episcopal Church as Presbyterian without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries § XII A smaller over voted number of Presbyters cannot validly dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries § XIII XIV XV. The Power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter is a right of the Presbytery in common by the Principles of Aristocratical Government § XVI XVII XVIII XIX An Objection Answered § XX XXI XXII Another Objection Answered § XXIII XXIV Retorted § XXV The reason of the Retortion given § XXVI p. 525. CHAP. XXVI 2. The Episcopal Communion to which every one is obliged to joyn himself as he would secure the ordinary means of his own particular Salvation is the Episcopal Communion of the place wherein he lives whilest he lives in it § I. This proved against the several sorts of the Non-Conformists according to their several Principles § II. 1. As to the Presbyterians and those who acknowledg an Obligation of Government antecedently to the consent of particular Subjects And that by these degrees 1. That by the obligation of Government in general all those particulars must be obliging without which it cannot be practicable § III. 2. Many of the Presbyterians themselves do acknowledg the determination of particular circumstances and the Application of general rules to particular cases to belong to the Office of Ecclesiastical Governours § IV. 3. It is absolutely necessary for the practicableness of Government in general that every Subject know his Governour and him particularly to whom be in particular owes Obedience § V. 4. The means whereby every particular Person may be convinced to whom it is that he in particular owes Subjection must be such as may be presumed notorious to the whole Community and such whereof others may judg as well as the Person particularly concerned and by which they may judg as well concerning his Duty as their own § VI. 5. The Authority of these means must be from God § VII VIII Two Consequences inferred from hence 1. Positive That they must be under a Divine Obligation to own the Authority of these Jurisdictions whilest they live within them § IX 2. Negative That from this Divine Authority of Jurisdictions they must find themselves obliged to forbear all opposite Communions or Assemblies within those Jurisdictions § X XI XII Application made particularly to the Presbyterians § XIII 2. As to the Independents who deny all Ecclesiastical Authority antecedently to the voluntary obligation of particular Persons § XIV XV. That there is really a Power of Government in the Church § XVI That this Power is not derived from the Multitude § XVII XVIII p. 547. CHAP. XXVII 2. That the nature of this Obligation to submit to all unsinful conditions of the Episcopal Communion is such as will make them guilty of the sin of SCHISM who will rather suffer themselves to be separated than they will submit to such conditions The Notion of SCHISM as it is only a breach of correspondence not sufficient for my purpose § I. As it is a breach of a Body Politick it is Application to our Adversaries § II. That by the Principles
of men must involve their Records in a greater danger of miscarriage than others Besides that this dependence on Records must in the natural course of things make the Government weakest in the later Ages when we are warned to expect the vices of men most outragious and most needing a restraint which makes it very unlikely to have been Gods pleasure that it should depend on them Which will weaken all our Adversaries Arguments either from the less or from the obscurity of those Primitive Records § IX AND that way of tryal must needs be less popular because it resolves it into more Ancient Histories and greater variety of Learning than can reasonably be supposed in popular capacities If therefore Episcopacy alone and Episcopacy in the modern sense be the only Succession of the Apostles which has been kept uninterrupted to our present times the consequence must then be certain that there can be no Apostolical Power in our present Age which is not derived even from our modern Episcopacy § X FOR it is further observable 5. That even for this Negative consequence it is sufficient that the Argument be deduced from the only substitutes that are extant in the Age to which it is applied that whatever is not done by them cannot be supposed to be done by the Apostles themselves For what if the Presbyterian Government had lasted as long as our Adversaries pretend it did What if the Apostles had lest the form of Government different in several places in some Episcopal in some Presbyterian as a very learned Person does conjecture Dr. Stillingfleet Iren. And what if the Presbyteries of those times had indeed the power of Ordination and intended to give that Power to all the particular Presbyters that were ordeined by them then All this would only prove that the Presbyters so ordeined in those times had indeed the Power of Ordination and that all who were then ordeined by them were validly ordeined But it does not therefore follow that the present Ordinations by simple Presbyters is valid also unless it can be still proved that such a Succession of Presbyterian Government has been continued down to our present times and that the Power of Ordination is now also conferred by them on simple Presbyters as they conceive it to have been then If all the Successions of those Presbyterian Governments be long since extinct as most certainly they are now if they ever were in being then it is as vain to revive a title from them now which is impossible to be received from them as it would be to revive the title of the Julian Family to the Roman Empire And therefore they being uncapable of having Successors on this supposition it must follow that the Episcopal Successions are the only Successions now remaining of the Apostolical Power so that neither Presbyters nor Presbyteries can now have any more of the Power of the Apostles than what they can derive from the Episcopal Successions CHAP. XXII The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion THE CONTENTS 4. This Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first dividers of the several parties had never a power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their Circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first Ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were Ordeined § VIII § I 4. THIS Authority is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion This is a plain Corollary from the former Propositions For from thence it has appeared that no Authority can be expected in this present Age but in that Communion where the Succession of Apostolical Power has been continued to this present And that this Succession has been continued to our days in no other but the Episcopal Communion I conceive to be a thing so notorious as that I think our Adversaries themselves will not deny it They do not that I know of pretend the like uninterrupted Succession in any other form of Government § II HENCE it plainly follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government or in any other Communion at present must be derived from the Episcopal especially of that Age wherein the several parties began I suppose therefore that within less than two hundred years since that there was no Church in the world wherein a visible Succession was mainteined from the Apostles times to ours which was not Episcopally governed I suppose also that the first Inventers of the several Sects were at first Members of these Episcopal Churches and received both their Baptism in them and all the Orders they received I need not use that Argument here that they must therefore have received their Authority in the Episcopal Communion because there was then no other Communion that could give this Authority I think our Adversaries themselves as many of them as pretend to a regular Ordination or a valid Succession will not deny but that what Orders were received by them were actually received by their Forefathers in the Episcopal Communion and by Episcopal Authority Let us therefore see whether the Orders so received can make valid what they now do in their several Separations that is whether they can ratifie their Ordinances or their Sacraments or any thing else that concerns them as a Church that is as a Society priviledged with Spiritual Priviledges § III AND here I do not intend to take the advantage I might against the exercise of that Power by these Persons in their separate condition which they had before really and validly received from a just Authority which was able to give it them I make no exceptions as to the validity of that exercise of it much less as to the Canonicalness of it which I know our Adversaries will much less regard The uttermost that can be made of that is only this that such Persons did receive a Power for their own Lives which must expire with their Lives which this present Generation is not concerned for If therefore I can shew that they of this Generation have nothing from them by which they can justifie the validity of their
which he is known to believe as a condition necessary in his circumstances to his being a Bishop he must think himself obliged to intend This observation will prevent all the Arguments by which themselves are perswaded that the Power of Ordination ought to be given to every Presbyter which they think the Bishop ought to will also and therefore that he ought to be presumed to will it if he be presumed to will as he ought It is his actual good intention that we are concerned for at present And that must not be presumed from Principles disputed but from Principles already and notoriously granted by him § VIII 4. THEREFORE in this way of judging of the actual intention of those Bishops who ordeined the first Separatists there can be no more prudent and secure measure than to consider the Notions then prevailing concerning the power of Presbyters especially those which were fundamental to all the Canons that were then in force as the Rules of Practice of this power These are most likely to have been taken by them for the measures of their Conscience And indeed the Canons were introduced into practice by a universal consent either when they were made or when they were received And they who received power yet were obliged to those Canons as to the exercise of it and therefore if they were either perswaded of the truth of the prevailing Opinion or were true to the obligations they had taken for the observance of the Canons these we have reason to presume to have been the measures of their consciences and therefore we have also reason further to suppose their practices such as might agree with these on supposition that they acted conscientiously And though possibly some particular persons might have entertained singular Opinions yet it is not so secure to presume his conveyance of Orders to have been fitted to his singular Opinions not only because it is not so easie to presume that any particular Person did follow a singular Opinion when the generality were so agreed in another nor only in regard of that resignation of Judgment which in those Ages was thought excellent in point of conscience on which account many thought themselves obliged to follow the sentiments of their Superiors in contradiction to their own but also because the validity of Succession depends on the practice and sense of the Generality of all places and Ages but especially of all Ages And though a particular person might intend differently from the rest of his Brethren yet he could give no more than himself had received and what that was depended on the intention of his Ordeiner which again will be best presumed from the sense of the Generality Only the supreme power is that which can never be presumed to have been confined At least this is a presumption that the Bishops then acted according to the Opinions and Canons then generally received unless they expresly declared themselves to the contrary Their silence is so far from being an Argument of their being of another mind as that it is indeed a very strong presumption in this case if in any of their consent If they continued silent when it so much concerned them to speak their minds that people might know the power they intended to give the Persons ordeined by them they must expect that people would understand them according to the received Opinions and therefore we have reason to presume that they themselves were desirous to be so understood § IX BUT whatever were the sentiments of the primitive Church concerning the Identity of Bishops and Presbyters originally whatever also they thought concerning the fitness that the power of Ordination should be given to bare Presbyters yet it is notorious that the contrary Opinion and Practice prevailed in the Church universally when the first dividing Presbyters whoever they were were ordeined and for many hundred years before even very near the times of the Apostles if we may believe the concurrent suffrages of the most learned Antiquaries of our Adversaries They do not deny and indeed the matter of Fact is too notorious to be denied by men of any ingenuity that whether they ought to be so or not yet actually Bishops were then distinguished from Presbyters and distinguished in this very particular that the power of Ordination was reserved as a Prerogative of the Bishop and never communicated to simple Presbyters Nor was it only their practice to do so but their Judgment that they ought to do so on account of Conscience It is very notorious that at least a little before the Reformation Aerius and the Waldenses Vid. Alphons à Castr. adv Haeres verb. Episcop and Marsilius of Padua and Wiclef were condemned for Hereticks for asserting the Parity of Bishops and Presbyters And it is withal as notorious that every Bishop was then obliged to condemn all Heresies that is all those Doctrines which were then censured as Heretical by that Church by which they were admitted to be Bishops and how odious also the name of Heresie was then even on account of Conscience I mention even these because whatever their Doctrines were in other things and how far soever they might go to justifie a separation from them who taught those Doctrines yet our Protestants themselves do not pretend to any Succession in these Western parts where themselves received their Orders but what was conveyed to them even by such Bishops as these were nor do I use their Authority for proving the Truth of their Doctrine in their censure of this particular Heresie but only to clear what their actual intention was in the Orders given by them for which it is sufficient that they themselves thought them true whether they were mistaken or not in thinking so However this is so acknowledged to have been believed and practised in the Ages we are speaking of as that the very Presbyterians themselves do charge them with differing herein from the sense of the first times because the Bishops had and exercised a Superiority over Presbyters which they conceive they had not in the Apostolical times They therefore call them Humane Bishops in opposition to the Scripture Bishops whom they conceive not to have been distinct from Presbyters And could the Bishops be no Scripture-Bishops because they were distinct from Presbyters And were not their Presbyters as much distinct for the same reason from Scripture-Presbyters because they were distinct from Bishops If this consequence hold why do they challenge the power and priviledges of those scripture-Scripture-Presbyters when they are so different from them If it do not why do they asperse the sacred Order of Episcopacy in modern Ages with such a deviation from the Primitive Rule § X HOWEVER this being notorious that the Bishops of the later Ages did actually think they ought to be distinct and distinct in this very particular of Ordination how is it probable that they would give all that power to Presbyters that should leave no distinction between them that
they would give that power of Ordination to them which they took for the most characteristical distinctive for the most incommunicable Prerogative of the Bishop over Presbyters Is it probable that they would have been so partial against their own common interest to betray the honour of their Order Is it probable that they would do so when they were as firmly perswaded that it was their right in Conscience as well as that it was their interest that it should be so Nay have we not all the assurance on the contrary that either Interest or Conscience can give us that those Bishops never intended to give the power of Ordination to the Presbyters ordeined by them nay that they intended on the contrary to reserve it from them And is not this as great an assurance as can be expected in such a matter CHAP. XXIII What influence the Opinion which prevailed in the modern Schools That Bishops and Presbyters differed not Order but in Degree might have upon the intention of the Ordeiners of those times THE CONTENTS § I The Objection Answ. 1. It seems rather to have been Interest than Conscience that inclined men to the belief of this Opinion This cleared from a short History of this Opinion § I II III IV V. Answ. 2. Though this Opinion had been received more universally than it appears it was by the Multitude yet it is not likely that it would be so received by the Bishops upon whose Intention the validity of the Orders conferred by them must depend § VI. Answ. 3. Though the Bishops of those Ages had been universally of this Opinion yet it does not thence follow that they must have given to the Presbyters ordeined by them the power of ordeining others It does not follow from the Notions of those times § VII Nor from the reason of the thing § VIII IX The Principles on which those Persons proceeded in making one Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery did not oblige them to believe that the Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters § X XI XII XIII XIV Answ. 4. They who then held this Opinion did in all likelihood neither intend nor think of any consequence from it prejudicial to the establishments then received § XV XVI THE only considerable Objection that I can foresee in this matter is the opinion which then obteined among some of the modern School-men that Bishops and Presbyters were all one Order and differed only in degree that the consecration of a Bishop did not give him a new Character but extend the old one which he had received before when he was ordeined Presbyter and the influence that this opinion might have on the Practice of those Bishops if any such there were who then believed it to give the whole essential power of Bishops to those whom they ordeined Presbyters yet so as to restrain them in the practice of it by their Canonical Obedience I do not take all the advantages I might against this opinion as it was maintained in those Ages to shew that it is too suspicious that it was rather pique than Conscience that then brought men to it Whenever it was vented it seems to have been vented with particular design and particular provocation Not to ascend to the more knowing times for in truth I am not desirous to touch the reputation any men have gained in the World where it may be spared with the interest of Truth that is indeed where errors have not been introduced into the World by the Authority of men of undeserved reputation and there sure none can blame me for complying with so unpleasing a necessity The first time that it was retrieved after St. Hierome seems to have been in the eighth Century and then with a particular design upon the Chorepiscopi whose power was then maligned as derogatory to the Ordinaries And the wisest course for reducing them and withal the least invidious was thought to be not so much directly to magnifie the power of the Ordinary as to magnifie the dignity of them who had been subject to the Chorepiscopi which they endeavoured not only by degrading the Chorepiscopus to the orders of a Presbyter but by extolling the office of a Presbyter to an equality in some regards with the Bishops to whom they the Chorepiscopus himself as well as other Presbyters were obliged to pay obedience as indeed he was All this dispute was nothing but pure design and how very disingenuously it was managed appears from the several Epistles of antient Popes counterfeited in that Age for this very purpose to prove the Chorepiscopi to have been simple Presbyters which may justly make us jealous of the integrity of the same party in this other principle which they advanced in opposition to it § II HAVING therefore gained their design in the subversion of this Office and the Bishops themselves not being hitherto concerned to oppose this opinion whilest it was so favourable to their interests and whilest it added to their power by the ruin of so considerable a Rival though we have reason to believe that this usefulness of the Opinion must have endeared it to the Affections of those who had served themselves by it yet we find little mention of it from that time till it became again useful That was when the Popes aspired to a Superiority above all Bishops and Councils Then it was that Dispensations and Delegations grew frequent so that nothing was performable by the Bishop by vertue of his Office but what was communicated to simple Presbyters by Papal Delegations This as it highly tended to the advancement of the Roman See so we may have reason to believe that all the Arts of the Roman Court and its Parasites were employed in promoting it And there was no more likely policy for it than this to make use of the same way for the subversion of the Episcopal Power which the Bishops themselves had before been so favourable to when it was used against the Chorepiscopi Which was a policy of the same kind with that which that politick See had made use of in their disputes with the Patriarch of Constantinople They then seemed not so much concerned for his equalling himself with them as for his preferring himself before the other Patriarchs This they knew to be a more popular Art to make him odious without discovering their own ambition And in our present case we know that this was the reason that made the Papal Bishops even in the Council of Trent so averse to the asserting the Divine institution of their own order And this I believe our Brethren themselves will confess to have been a very corrupt design And yet in these unhappy times whilest this ill design was driving on the School-men flourished of whose suffrages they are so proud in this particular § III AND as the Pope was thus interested to oppress the Episcopal Authority whilest it was capable to stand in competition with him so when afterwards the generality
Damasus wherein he so extols the See of Rome seems to have recommended him to the counterfeiter of the Roman Council under the name of Gelasius not long before the time of Isidore Mercator as the Authority of that Council in Isidore's Collection might recommend him downwards as soon as that bundle of Forgeries had once prevailed universally All the use that I make at present of these insinuations is that if it be suspicious whether the men who then followed these Principles did embrace them out of a sincere sense of their Truth then they cannot be presumed to have been Principles of Conscience Which if they were not this is sufficient to shew that they are not fit measures of the Power that was actually given by the Bishops of that Age. § VI AND though they had been received more universally than it appears they were among the Multitude yet how is it likely that it was so received among the Bishops themselves Is it likely that they would be generally so partial to an Opinion so destructive of their common rights as Bishops Is it likely that they would be so partial when there was no evident prevailing consideration in point of Conscience that might induce them to it when it was a matter of dispute even among disinterested Persons and debated by Arguments and Authorities at least as considerable on their side as on the others If any particular Bishops had been so strangely partial against themselves and thought themselves obliged in Conscience to be so yet sure there is no reason to make use of it as a presumption to judg of the minds of them who had not otherwise declared their minds expresly and to judg of them universally And yet it has appeared that the whole use of this opinion for judging what Power was actually given is only as a presumption and even this presumption is useless concerning others than the Bishops None but they pretended to the Power of giving Orders at least not to the exercise of that Power And therefore whatever any else thought besides the Bishops is very impertinent to our present purpose because it can give us no assurance what was actually intended by the Bishops and it is only their intention by which we can in prudence judg what Power was actually given by them § VII BUT let us suppose that which in prudence can never be supposed that the Bishops of those Ages were universally of this opinion that their own Order was the same with that of Presbyters yet it does not thence follow that they must have given Presbyters the Power of Ordination It neither follows from the Notions of those times nor from the reason of the thing And sure we cannot better judg of a matter of this nature than by one of these two ways It does not follow from the Notions of those times For even they who thought them to be the same Order yet made them different degrees and that not only from the custom of the Church but by Divine Right also But it could not have appeared how they could distinguish them even in degree but by allowing something in practice to the Superior degree as a peculiar Prerogative and there was nothing thought so a So Epiphanius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hâ—res lxxv 4 And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ib. And St. Chrysostome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 init Hom. ii in 1. ad Tim. p. 289. peculiar to the Episcopal degree as this power of Ordination This was the very particular excepted by St. Hierome b Quid enim facit exceptâ Ordinatione Episcopus quod Presbyter non faciat Ep. 85. ad Euagr. himself even where he most of all pleads for parity in other things I know there are of our Brethren who understand St. Hierome's words not of the original right of appropriating ordination to them as left to them by the Apostles but of a priviledg actually allowed them by the practice of the Church in that Age wherein he wrote which I shall not now dispute It suffices that he made no mention of Ordination among the instances of their parity nay that he expresly excepts this particular among his other proofs of the identity of their Office without telling expresly on what right it was that he made the exception which were very fair occasions to induce them to believe that he did not intend to give them the power of Ordination especially when it was withal notorious and confessed by himself that he lived in the Communion of a Church wherein Presbyters were debarred from the exercise of this Power It suffices that they who in that Age followed his Authority were not obliged by any of their designs in promoting his opinion to understand him of a parity in the power of Ordination nay never seem actually to have understood him so whatever other sense has been applied to him by those who have more subtilly considered him in our present Age. It is not St. Hierome's true opinion that I am now concerned for but that of those who might then have followed him If they never understood him of a parity between Bishops and Presbyters in the power of ordination If they did not really believe them equal in this particular if they actually believed that this distinction of degree was from the Apostles and that this power of ordination was the peculiar Prerogative of the Superior degree then certainly they who then followed St. Hierome might notwithstanding if they maintained these things also together with his opinion thinks themselves obliged never to give the power of ordination to the Presbyters that were then ordeined by them So far our Brethren are from any solid ground of a presumption that such a thing was ever intended for them § VIII AND as this consequence was far from being owned in the actual sense of those times so neither will it indeed follow from the opinion of these Persons that simple Presbyters had any right to a power of Ordination Though they believed Episcopacy to be the same Order with Presbytery yet their acknowledging a difference in degree was enough to hinder them from confounding the peculiar rights of the several degrees and this we see was taken for the peculiar right of Episcopacy Though they conceived no new Character to have been imprinted in the Consecration of a Bishop yet withal they confessed that the Character of his Presbytery was extended And why may not this extension extend his Power also at least to some Acts to which he had not Power before Nay certainly this very thing was intended by them that it should actually do so And if so then certainly this extended Power must have implied an addition of Power above what was in it before it was so extended Whence it will plainly follow that this Power of Ordination to which the Episcopal Character was extended was wanting in them whilest they were simple Presbyters that is before it was so extended And therefore they who were of
this Opinion could not think themselves obliged to give this Power to simple Presbyters As to the Canonical exercise of their Power Presbyters still depended on their Bishops even in things not exceeding their Power as Presbyters But when a simple Presbyter was licensed to Preach or hear Confessions this was not properly called an extension of his Character By which it seems most likely that by this extension of the Character they did not only mean a Canonical Liberty to exercise more Acts of the same Power which they supposed them to have received before but an addition of a new branch of Power which because Presbyters want if they presume to exercise it their doing so must prove not only Vncanonical but invalid Though they believed the substance of the Power to have been the same yet certainly the least that could have been meant by the difference of Degree between Bishops and Presbyters must have been that Bishops had that same Power independently which the Presbyters had dependently on the Bishops as to the exercise of it Undoubtedly this they did grant who held this Opinion of St. Hierome in the greatest rigor in those Ages I am speaking of if they did not grant something more And yet this is sufficient for my present design both to shew why these very Persons might not have thought it fit to give this power of Ordination to simple Presbyters and why it is very rational for us also to presume that they did not actually give it them § IX FOR by the fundamental Principles of all Societies the Power of giving Power to others is still reserved as a Prerogative of him who has that same Power independently And the reason of it is very plain as to both parts as to him that has the Power dependently and as to him who has it independently He who has the Power of administring the Sacraments yet so as to depend on the Authority of another in the exercising of that Power cannot therefore with any Justice make a valid conveyance of that Power to another because he cannot himself be taken for an absolute Master of that Power Though the Power it self be given irrevocably yet while it is given with the condition of dependence is cannot be alienable by the Person to whom it is given without the givers consent because the right of alienation supposes a property of our own and dependence implies a reservation of right to him on whom we do depend which right as it is absolutely necessary to an intire alienation so it cannot with any Justice or validity be disposed of without the consent of him whose property it is Besides that giving of Power does plainly belong to the exercise of Power and to a higher degree of exercise of it than that of the exercise of the Power so given as it implies a greater Power to give a Power which includes a capacity of all the Acts belonging to it than only to give a liberty to exercise a particular Act. And therefore he who has not a just title to give way to the exercise of the Power so given can be much less supposed to have one to that higher exercise of Power by which the Power it self is disposed of It is also clear as to him that has the Power independently It is necessary for Government that all others do depend on those who are themselves supposed independent But this cannot be understood unless the independent Power alone be allowed the Power of admitting to Office whom he pleases If others may be allowed to give their Power they will soon make themselves independent if they were not so at first by making a party and perpetuating it But because this whole Power of giving Power in the Persons I am speaking of is so eternally irreconcilable with the safety of Societies therefore it is fit it should never be given them and therefore in the way of presumption for which I am at present concerned it is to be presumed that it never was intended for them § X BUT if our Brethren would be pleased to reflect on the Principles on which these Persons proceeded in making one Order of Episcopacy and Presbytery they would find that they did not in the least oblige them to believe that this Power of ordeining others was a right of simple Presbyters The plain reason was that they made their distinction of Orders only in relation to the Sacrament of the Eucharist And because simple Priests had the full Power of this Sacrament of consecrating as well as of administring it so that there was nothing higher requisite for the completion of this solemnity reserved to the Bishop nor capable of being reserved to him therefore there was on this account no room left for any Order above Priesthood And because this Power of transubstantiating the Eucharistical Elements was then looked on as the highest instance of Power that could be communicated to Mortals because this was thought sufficient to exempt from all Subjection to temporal Princes nay to place the Spiritual Power above the Princes and yet in this instance of Power which had been so extremely extolled in the Disputes of those Ages between the Popes and Princes the Bishops could pretend to do no more than what was performable by every ordinary Priest therefore it can be no wonder if in this regard many of them could not allow any Order superior to that of simple Priesthood He that is but a little conversant in the writings of that Age will find that as the Doctrine of Transubstantiation was very eagerly mainteined as the great recommendation of the Sacred Power in those Disputes which were then raised concerning it so it is particularly urged for the honour of Presbytery as often as they were put upon magnifying their Office And this I therefore take in earnest to have been the true reason that inclined those of the Writers of that Age that followed this Opinion rather than the pretended instances of Scripture or even the Authority of St. Hierome himself For these were Principles for which as they were more firmly interested so I believe they were also much more heartily believed in that Age than any on◠particular controverted sense of Scripture recommended on the Authority of one particular Father And therefore whatever Superiority of Bishops over Priests was reconcilable with this allowance of a Power of consecrating the Eucharist to simple Priests all this might have been acknowledged by these very Persons notwithstanding their making them the same Order And considering that this Power of Ordination was thus reconcilable this Opinion could not hinder those Persons from appropriating it to the Bishops § XI FOR notwithstanding this Power of the Priesthood over the Corpus Christi verum was thought common to them with the Bishops yet the Power over the Corpus Christi Mysticum this was the language of those Ages was then acknowledged for the peculiar right of the Bishops And what can our Adversaries think themselves gainers
by this Opinion as it was mainteined then if they did not think the peculiarity of this Power sufficient to constitute a distinct Order What matter is it whether they owned the word or no so long as they owned the thing which our Adversaries may possibly think more properly imported by the word Whatever the word do most properly signifie yet when we use it as we do now to judg of the meaning of those who used it we are to take it as they understood it how improperly soever they understood it And we have the rather reason to do so in this case because the word had no notorious sense antecedent to those Ages which they might be obliged to mean and which they might therefore be presumed to mean where they did not very expresly declare the contrary The terms of Ordo and Gradus as they were terms of Art were intirely introduced by themselves unmentioned in the Sacred Writers no nor as the constant language of the Church neither of the Catholick Church nor even of the Latine Church for many of the most ancient Ages And why might not they be allowed to impose their own signification on their own terms § XII IF our Adversaries say that the allowance of this Power only to Bishops will make them a distinct Order then they must confess that the Authors we are speaking of were of our mind in the thing and of theirs only in the use of the words which they will find will stand them in no stead for the present design of proving their Succession They must then say that those Authors make Episcopacy really a distinct Order with us though they were pleased to call it only a distinct Degree with them But if they grant that this Power is not sufficient to make them a distinct Order we shall not be very solicitous whether they use that word so long as they acknowledg this Power This Power of Government being appropriated to the Bishops will in the consequence appropriate the Power of Ordination to them not only as Ordination implies the giving of the Power of Government to inferior Governours but also as it is requisite for the ends of Government not to give simple Presbyters a Power of giving their Power to others for fear of that independence which would in course follow thereupon even in the exercise of that Power Whatever our Adversaries may think of this reasoning in it self yet certainly they cannot deny it to have been agreeable to the actual Notions of those times which is as much as I am concerned for at present § XIII AND if we would according to another Notion of those times found the Power over the Corpus Christi Mysticum on the power over the Corpus Christi verum yet even so there was room left for asserting the Power of Ordination to the Bishops alone For though the Power over the Corpus Christi verum was taken for the highest exercise of Power that was communicated to Mortals yet even in that exercise of Power there were several Degrees which might very probably incline them to acknowledg a distinction rather in Degree than in Order between the Persons distinguished by them and this distinction of Degrees was sufficient for appropriating the Power of Ordination to the Bishops alone Even in the exercise of that Power he who had a Power to give his Power to another must be supposed to have a greater degree of that same Power than he who had it only for his own Person and so that it must expire with his Life Whether this was a distinct Power or a distinct Degree of the same Power seems to have been the main dispute between them who disputed whether Episcopacy were a distinct Order or Degree from Presbytery Whoever was in the right it is sufficient for my purpose that they were both agreed in this that this Supreme whether we call it Power or only Degree of Power was appropriated to the Bishops so that it was never so much as given to ordinary Presbyters And what matter was it whether they called the Character of the Bishop a new one oâ— an extension of the old one which he had when he was made Presbyter These were also terms first brought into general use by themselves from the private use of St. Augustine and it was in their pleasure how they would use them It is sufficient for me that the Power of ordeining others was not grounded barely on the Character it self but on the Character as extended and therefore could not be validly challenged by them who had the Character alone given them without its extension § XIV AND though the Power of Jurisdiction over the Corpus Christi Mysticum for term of Life were grounded on the Power over the Corpus Christi verum for time of Life also so that he who had the Power over the Corpus Christi verum could oblige the Mystical Body to what terms he pleased and set up what Jurisdiction he pleased over them when they could not have the true Body without him yet so it self there was a right reservable to the Bishop over the true Body which might both oblige Priests to a dependence on the Bishop and the whole Church to a nearer and more necessâ—ry dependency on Episcopacy than on the Priesthood The Priests not having the exercise of their Power over the true Body but by appointment of the Bishop must oblige the Mystical Body to a greater dependence on the Bishop than on Priests in the exercise of this common Power For this will it put in the Power of the Bishop to deprive the Mystical Body of the true Body if he should forbid the Priests the exercise of their Power though against their consent and will withal put it out of the Power of the Priest to oblige the Mystical to any dependence on them in opposition to the Bishop by denying them the true Body when the Bishop requires them to give it because their presuming to refuse it in such a case must be an invasion of the Bishops right and must consequently infer a Nullity in what they do without right to do it But the Priests not having this Power given them of giving their Power to others this must in regard of this dependence of the Mystical Body on the true Body free the People from a dependence on the Priesthood which cannot secure them of the true Body in another generation And on the contrary the Bishops having this Power given them and to them alone this will oblige the Mystical Body to depend on them for a Succession because they alone can continue the administration of the true Body to them through all Ages of Succession § XV AND as these Doctrines are very reconcilable with that of making Episcopacy and Presbytery one Order on the Principles now mentioned so they were certainly the actual sense of those who followed that Doctrine in that Age. Most certainly they who were of this opinion could not
intend to follow the Doctrines I do not say of the Aerians who had been reckoned in the Catalogues of Hereticks S. Augustini Epiphanli long before their own times but even of the Wiclevists and Waldenses who had been more lately censured for mainteining the equality of Bishops and Presbyters They who know how odious the name of Heretick was in those days and how express condemnations of them were required from Persons who were to be admitted to preferments and how these Catalogues and Councils who had censured these Persons were the Standards whereby such Persons were obliged to judg who were Hereticks they I say cannot believe that the Bishops of that Age could have kept either their Communion or their Preferments if they had been of our Adversaries mind in asserting the Order and Character of Episcopacy to have been the same with that of Priesthood And they must still remember that it is by what was mainteined by them with a good conscience that we must judg what Power was actually designed for the Presbyters ordeined by them We must not therefore understand these Opinions so as to think that the Persons who mainteined them in the Ages we are speaking of intended to exclude all difference between the two Offices And if any difference were acknowledged it must have been this of Ordination which St. Hierome himself the principal Author of this Opinion had acknowledged for such an inseparable peculiar Prerogative of Episcopacy And therefore we have all the reason we can desire to presume that even Persons of this Perswasion in that Age did intend to reserve this Power from the Presbyters that were ordeined by them § XVI FOR it is particularly considerable that this case of theirs is not capable of that Apology for submitting to an unjust Government which is usually and I think very justly made use of to excuse St. Hierome He indeed seems to have thought that in the Apostles Age the Presbyters had a greater interest in the Government of the Church than was allowed them in his own But this did not hinder his submission to the Government even of his own time though it had not been so just nay did not hinder him from thinking that it might then have a very just though an only humane right It was his sense not of the Government in the Apostles times but of the Government of his own times that concerned his present practice But that which these Persons taught who made Bishops and Presbyteries of the same Order concerned not only the Apostles Age but their own They thought them still to be not only de Jure but de Facto of the same Order and therefore could not think themselves under any higher Duty to their Bishops than what was consistent with their being of the same Order And therefore if this had allowed them a Power of Ordeining others why did they not challenge that Power why did they suffer the Bishops to ingross it to themselves and to secure their present Vsurpations to posterity for ever by an unquestioned peaceable prescription Could not any one bold Spirit be found who would stand up for the honour of his Order Could neither interest nor conscience neither animate some to give a preâ—edent of contradicting it they do not seem in those Ages to have been generally so meâ—k and so fearful of disturbing the publick Peace for what they thought to be their right Mighty quarrels were then engaged on for matters of incomparably more trivial concernment and where withal they had less interest either to provoke or animate them than here And if indeed they had thought of any such consequences as they must have thought if their meaning in this Assertion were such as our Adversaries are apt to understand it to have been how came it to pass that it escaped the censures of their then present Superiors Is it likely that it could have escaped those censures in such an Age wherein policy was their principal study and the principal employment of their zeal was the maintenance of their present establishments Did none of these Persons who mainteined these Opinions ever come themselves to be Governours And if their Opinions altered with their Interests must they not then have been conscious of the ill consequence and mischievousness of what they had mainteined formerly If none of them had been conscious of these things from their own experience yet sure their jealousie and the momentousness of the thing would have made them suspicious though they wanted solid grounds if they had only likelihoods And these suspicions were sufficient to have awakened all their diligence for suppressing them When I consider these things I cannot but think that the Persons who then mainteined this Opinion concerning the identity of the Order of Bishops and Presbyters must needs have been very far from thinking of any consequence prejudicial to their present establishments much less from attempting any thing in practice till pure necessity as well as opportunity forced them upon it They did not therefore pretend to excuse Presbyters from the least instance of their Canonical Obedience to their Ordinary even of that Obedience which was prescribed by the Canons of those times So far it is from being probable that they intended to give them the peculiar prerogative of the Bishop the Power of ordeining others nay so far do they seem from so much as judging it fit in Conscience that this Power should be given to them who were then ordeined Presbyters And yet from what has been already said it appears sufficiently that nothing short of their actual intentions to give them this Power can suffice to legitimate our Brethrens present Ordinations CHAP. XXIV The Nullity of the Ordinations of the Non-Conformists proved from the Power of the Bishops even as Presidents over the Presbyteries THE CONTENTS § I This Supposition That the Bishops had the right of presiding over Ecclesiastical Assemblies sufficient for our purpose § I. 1. In regard of that Power which must be granted due to him even as President This proved by these degrees 1. Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no Power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated § II. 2. No act can be presumed to be the act of that Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies § III. 3. No Assemblies can dispose of the right of such Societies but such as are lawful ones according to the constitutions of the Societies § IV V. 4. The indiction of the Assembly by the President is a right consequent to the Office of a President as a President and a circumstance requisite to make the Assembly it self lawful § VI VII 5. The Bishops have always been the Presidents of Ecclesiastical Assemblies even as high as our Adversaries themselves do grant the Practice of Presiding Presbyters § VIII IX This invalidates the Orders of our Adversaries § X. This was a right which no
mentioned For grant this power of perpetual presiding to the Bishops and it will then follow that the right of convening Ecclesiastical Assemblies will belong to them Therefore those Assemblies which meet without their Calling as all those must do which meet out of their Communion can be no lawful Assemblies But the acts of unlawful Assemblies though otherwise consisting of such Persons as had a real power in lawful ones are Nullities can oblige the Society to nothing much less can they dispose of a thing of so great moment to them as their power They are not only Nullities but offences of that nature as that they are so far from obliging the Societies in any equity to confirm them as that they do oblige them by the highest common interest to punish them Which plainly shews that though Presbyters had been allowed a power of Ordination yet they could not validly exercise it out of the Episcopal Communion and therefore that whatever may be said to that Question yet that cannot make it questionable whether the Orders of our present Adversaries be valid § XI THIS right of presiding in the Assemblies was a thing which the highest Asserters of the Identity of Order between Bishops and Presbyters in the modern Ages I am speaking of did undoubtedly never think the Bishops obliged to renounce Nor could any Bishop how heartily soever he believed that opinion be presumed to give the Presbyters ordeined by him a power of meeting without his leave when themselves pleased And yet undoubtedly the Bishops were actually possessed of that power by a peaceable prescription of many Centuries and by the consent of the Presbyters themselves who lived in them so that the Presbyters then ordeined could lay no claim to it without an express gift from the Bishops who ordeined them because they never had that power nor were there any remaining then who could give it them besides the Bishops And indeed the Bishops could not renounce this power without dissolving the Society by making the exercise of Government unpracticable or without changing the whole frame of Government For supposing they had renounâ—ed this right who must have had it If none had it how could the Society be secured that Assemblies should meet if none had power to call them if non had power to oblige particular Members to be present at them when called If any particular Presbyter had been intrusted with it that had only been an alteration of the Person not of the right of the Office The new intrusted Presbyter would thereby become the Bishop by what name soever they would be pleased to call him and all the change that ordinary Presbyters would find by such an act would be only of their Master not of their subjection If it had been given away indefinitely no particular Presbyter could lay a better claim to it than all his Brethren and by all it is not practicable till they be considered as convened in an Assembly If it had therefore been given to the whole Assembly either they must thenceforth have stated times allotted them for meeting or every meeting must be allowed to adjourn themselves and to appoint the time and place for meeting again If at any time no meeting were ascertained the Government would be dissolved This is indeed the way practised in Peliarchical Governments but such a resignation of the Bishop as this must therefore have altered the very frame of the Government And where can our Adversaries give any precedent either in Catholick Tradition or even in the times of the Scripture it self wherein any such thing was practised by Presbyteries Where was it ever heard that they called or adjourned themselves without the Authority of the President of their Assemblies by what name soever our Brethren will be pleased to call them § XII NOR am I concerned by my present interest how the Bishops came by their power of presiding whether by the Election of their Clergy or People or whether by a new consecration by Bishops only Let the guesses of St. Hierome the counterfeit Ambrose and Eutychius be as true as our Adversaries can wish them Let it be so that the Bishops received no new Consecration of their own Order that no men but the Presbyters were concerned in giving their power to them Our Adversaries usually think they have performed a great matter when they have produced these conjectures of these Authors And yet when they have made all they can of them they are no better than conjectures These Authors lived too far from the times they speak of to assure us of any thing Historically Nor do they pretend to any Histories we know not of that might put us in any hope that they speak what they say on better grounds than eonjecture Yet these are the only grounds of all that our Adversaries say positively in this matter But I say granting that these conjectures were true and that not only the ancient Bishops but the Bishops of the Ages we are speaking of had no new consecration nor consequently had any new power from what they were capable of receiving by the Canonical Election of their Clergy and granting therefore that all the further power they pretend to by their Consecration is no just accession of power and therefore none at all I do not see how even by this power which they may receive by their Election our Adversaries can defend the validity of their present Ordinations For what if the Bishop had received his power from the Presbyters Does it therefore follow that the Presbyteries must not depend on him when he has received it Does it follow that they must still have power as freely as formerly to assemble themselves without his leave and either to depose him or to set up another in his stead or at least to erect themselves an independent Body on any Superior Does it follow that such practices of theirs would be valid if they should attempt them § XIII NAY the very contrary has been taken hitherto for the only solid security of peace in all prudent humane establishments In all elective Kingdoms the Interreges have a power during the vacancy to dispose of the affairs of the Kingdom till a new King be elected But they as well as other Subjects would be guilty of Treason if they should attempt the same things afterwards Their Assemblies would be as illegal and their proceedings in them of as little validity as those of other Subjects So in St. Hieromes instance Ep. ad Euagr. the Army chose the Emperor and when he was so chosen he was not invested in his power by any Authority superior to that of the Army Yet that power of the Army expired as soon as he was once peaceably settled in the power received from them They could not then meet as they had done formerly If they did such meetings were thenceforwards illegal and their proceedings null Much less could they justifie a revolt from him or validly defend their
belong to him as a Presbyter though he were not also a President of the Presbytery and therefore cannot take it for a Prerogative of his Office as President That it is therefore from some such a Presbytery as this that they must derive the validity of their Orders appears from the Principles already premised that no other Presbyteries can make out their Succession from the Apostles that particular Members of even these Presbyteries cannot do it alone in a separation from them that Multitudes of such particular Persons though meeting together cannot make up such a Church among them as were requisite to attest the Orders of Persons ordeined to the rest of the Catholick Church who maintein correspondence with them § XIII CONSIDERING therefore these Episcopal Presbyteries only as Presbyters and the Bishop himself as acting herein by no higher a power than that of an ordinary Presbyter yet even so no Orders can be valid but those which were conferred by the prevailing vote of even such a Presbytery at least those are invalid which are given by the votes of a smaller over voted part of them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government though it were doubtful whether the greater part might dispose a right common to them all without the consent of every particular yet it hardly can be doubtful whether a smaller part can dispose of such a common right though over-voted by a greater number of suffrages than their own Though it may be thought reasonable that some reserved cases of that nature wherein the whole Society were deeply concernâ—d should not pass without the unanimous suffrages of every individual Member yet as there is no Justice antecedently to compacts that any individuals should dispose of the rights of others though less considerable than themselves till by the general acts and compacts of all whereby Polyarchical Societies are most naturally settled such general rules are agreed on by which some particular Members may for peaces sake be allowed to dispose of the common rights of their Fellow-members without their express consent in the particular but by vertue of their general consent once given to such general rules so neither is there any reason in prudence that where unanimous consent cannot be had and it is therefore necessary that one part yield to the other the greater should be swayed by the smaller part The fundamental rule of all this publick justice is that where there is a necessity of a choice the publick be preferred before private interests that therefore it is very just to bear with injuries to private Persons when they cannot be avoided without injuries to the publick Which will in generosity oblige a smaller part to yield to a greater but can on no terms oblige the greater to yield to the smaller because indeed the interest of the greater part is more the publick interest than that of the smaller § XIV BESIDES the reason of all compacts of this kind of referring their differences to a publick decision is the presumed equality of the decision above what would be among the interessed Persons themselves and the power to execute what is resolved on beyond the resistance of those against whom the cause is decided And therefore if we should again suppose men free as they were before these compacts I am speaking of we have reason to presume that they would settle this power of deciding their differences in such hands where there might be presumed less danger of corruption and where there were the greatest power to execute their own decrees And both these reasons give the preference to these major votes above the smaller part It is to be presumed that it is not so easie to corrupt a greater as it is to corrupt a smaller part And when it is necessary that the decree be executed the power of the greater is greater than that of the smaller part where the particular Subjects of power are supposed equal as they are in our present case And though it be very possible in after cases that it may so fall out that the greatest right may sometimes belong to that side where there is the smallest power yet we have reason to believe that the only reason why it comes to be so is the unexpectedness of revolutions to which humane affairs are obnoxious which could not be so much as probably foreseen when the rules of such Societies were first agreed on Otherwise it is reasonable to presume that at the first constitution of those rules they would chuse the greatest power and interest for the fittest seat of Authority because they would by that be best secured of the execution of the Sentences given by them And therefore where we may presume the greater power lay at the passing of those compacts and where they who made those compacts had reason to see the greatest power would always be there we have also reason to presume that they would intend to place the greatest Authority § XV AND this is a reason which might in all probability induce them to resolve that the major vote should prevail through all succeeding generations because the major vote in the case I am speaking of must inseparably carry with it the greatest power And this is a reason that alike concerns all by whom the Government were at first settled whether it were by compacts of the Parties themselves who were to be governed or whether the Government were placed over them by a power who had a Jurisdiction over them antecedently to their own consent There is the same reason why such a power should decree that the smaller number of suffrages in opposition to a greater number should be null in Societies to be established by him as that the Parties themselves should at first agree that it should be so The reasons now mentioned proceed alike in both cases Which I therefore observe that our Adversaries may perceive that as to the case of which I am now speaking it will come to the same event whether the power of the Presbyteries do come from the consent of the particular Presbyters or whether it proceed immediately from the Divine institution Still it is to be presumed that things are to be decided by the vote of the greater part where nothing is otherwise expresly determined because this way of determination is so certainly for the publick interest for which we have as much reason to presume that God would be solicitous as that the Presbyters themselves would be so § XVI BY this it appears even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government how invalid as well as how irregular it must be for a smaller over-voted number of the Presbyters to undertake to dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries whether as acting by themselves or as acting in Presbyteries made up of multitudes of such Presbyters as had been severally over-voted in the Presbyteries to which each of them did at first belong Now that the power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter
must be a right of the Presbytery in common according to our Adversaries Principles who conceive Government to be a right common to them I do not know whether our Adversaries themselves will think it necessary for me to prove If the supreme visible Government of the Church be the right of such Presbyteries in common not of particular Presbyters singly considered I cannot conceive how such a Government can be practicable unless the valid investiture of subordinate Governours be also appropriated to them § XVII I AM not concerned whether they will here allow the power given at the Ordination of a Presbyter to be a proper power of Government It suffices at present that the power given to particular Presbyters is as properly a power of Government as that is of the whole Presbyteries The power of the whole Presbyteries is only an Aggregate resulting from the valid Succession of the particular Presbyters whereof it consists And the power of Administring the Sacraments which is given to particular Presbyters at their Ordination is that on which their power of Government is grounded That is the reason which obliges all private Persons to submit to the Presbyteries and to all their lawful impositions because God has put it in their power to exclude refractory Persons from the ordinary means of Salvation And as far as this power of administring the Sacraments is granted to particular Presbyters when they are ordeined Presbyters so far also it is put in their power to exclude private Persons from the Sacraments by refusing to perform their Office to them Only because this exclusion by a particular Presbyter does not hinder other Presbyters who have as great a power as himself who should exclude one from performing their duty to a Person so excluded and the exclusion does oblige the Person excluded to submission no further than as he cannot hope for the benefit of the Sacraments without the consent of his excluder therefore it can only be to the whole Presbytery that every Member of a Church can be obliged to submit because it is the Presbytery alone that can oblige all to ratifie their censures so that the Sacraments cannot at all be gotten without their consent They can â—â—lige their own Members to ratifie them by vertue of the Subjection which each of them owes to the whole Community And they can oblige all other Churches and Presbyteries to ratifie their censures by vertue of that correspondence which all Churches and Presbyteries are obliged to maintein with each other on account of their common interest But still this does not hinder but that the power of particular Presbyters must be of the same kind with the power of the whole Presbyteries though it be not of the same extent which on the Principles now mentioned is sufficient to appropriate the disposal of it to the common right of Government § XVIII AND as by the former Argument it has appeared that de facto no such power was actually designed for them by their first Ordeiners as is at present exercised by our Brethren in their separation so by this later Topick it appears that it does not de jure belong to them by vertue of any thing given them by the Episcopal Presbyteries though we consider them as our Brethren are willing to consider them in this act of Ordination only as Presbyteries or at the utmost only as Presbyteries with a President which cannot make any substantial difference much less can the honour of presiding lose the President any of that honour which belongs to him as a single Presbyter Which I therefore observe that our Brethren may see how unjustifiable their Ordinations are upon any terms Though this power had been designed for them by their Ordeiners or though their being made Presbyters by their Ordeiners did as they think confer this power upon them really how little soever it was designed for them yet neither of these pretences can be available if their acts were not valid acts of the Presbyteries If they were not they could not give what they did intend to give them because they could not confer a valid legal title to that which was not their own to give So far must they be in such a case as this from giving really more than they intended to give If they think it usurpation for the Bishops and the Presbyters who adhere to them to act in the name of the whole Presbyteries how much greater Vsurpation must it be for a smaller over-voted number of Presbyters to attempt the same without the Bishop Certainly his presence though only as a first Presbyter must add great Authority to the legitimating their Assemblies as that must also do to the validity of their actings in them § XIX NAY on the contrary as they cannot either by any precedent or any reason defend the validity of such acts of a smaller part of the Presbyters without the Bishops so I do not understand how they can avoid the owning the validity even of the acts of a smaller number of Presbyters in conjunction with the Bishops if they will consider their own interest in them The Presbyters who assisted the Bishops in the solemnities of ordeining their first Predecessors were much the smaller part of the Presbyteries As for the rest their consent was not so much as required neither by any express act of their own nor by any delegation of their power to those who were present nor presumed from their absence after a Canonical summons And yet if these acts were not valid our Brethren cannot possibly defend the validity of their own Ordinations But if they be I might then shew how impossible it is that the validity of such acts can be derived from the power of the Presbytery and how necessary it is that they be resolved into an absolute power of the Bishop and therefore how much they will be obliged to own the power of the Bishops that they may defend the validity of their own Orders And considering that the Bishops and Presbyters make up one Government it is impossible if he be absolute that they can be so too And therefore if he can validly dispose of the common right without their consent they cannot possibly dispose of it without his which will again invalidate the acts of those Presbyteries for which our Brethren are concerned And if this power of ordeining others was never given to our Brethren de facto and if withal the validity of the conveyance fail by which they may pretend to it de jure beside the intention of their Ordeiners I do not understand what more can be requisite for overthrowing the validity of their Ordinations § XX THAT which they are apt to object after all is that they are made Presbyters and were designed to be made so and to be made so in the Scripture Notion of that word and that Ordination is a right belonging to a Scripture Presbyter But why should they presume that their design was to make Presbyters in
is there any reason for them to oppose God and the Church as they usually do on this and other occasions If the Church's Authority be received from God then what is done by her is to be presumed to come from him the same way as what is done by any mans Proxy is presumed to be his own act and as what is done by an inferior Magistrate by virtue of his Office is presumed to come from the supreme Which will especially hold as a presumption that is where there are no clearer proofs of the supreme Magistrates mind being contrary to that of the inferior than our Adversaries can pretend to for proving the inseparable union of these powers by Divine institution If they were then united by God because they were united by the men who represented God why are they not disunited by God now when men alike empowered by him have disunited them Why should they not oblige God in one case as well as the other especially when there is nothing in the Commission it self that implies confinement in one case rather than the other and when the whole reason of judging is taken only from the actual practice how is it possible that any actual practice can prescribe against the power that introduced it that it may not introduce a different practice as arbitrarily as it introduced this If there had been a distinct Authority for making the union of these two powers inseparable distinct from that which united them only in practice or if the same Authority of men which united them in practice had declared Gods pleasure to be that they should for ever be so united though they might reverse the Authority of their own practice yet it might not be in their power to evacuate their own Declarations because those are supposed to belong to an Authority greater than their own and antecedent to it and therefore may rationally be supposed such as may null all future acts that are contrary to it But such distinct Authority or distinct Declaration our Adversaries cannot pretend in our present case § XXV AND if they could prove this inseparable Vnion of these two powers by the Divine appointment our Adversaries would do well to consider whether it would be more for their interest or their disadvantage that is whether it will not rather follow that they are no Presbyters at all who have received Episcopal Ordination that they have no power of administring the Sacraments because it is certain that they have not received the power of Ordination than that they must have received the power of ordeining other Presbyters because they have received the power of administring the Sacraments The Negative consequence is as unavoidable from the inseparableness of these two powers as the Affirmative that is it is as certain that where one of those powers is certainly not given there nothing is given because it cannot be supposed to be given alone as that if one be given the other must be given also As therefore it is certain that the Ordeiners intended to reserve the power of Ordination from the Persons ordeined Presbyters by them so it will follow by this principle that if the whole power was not intended none was so And if what was not intended was not given and what was not given was not received and the power of Ordination was not received then neither could the power of administring the Sacraments be received also And if so then let them be called by what name they please yet really they will be no Presbyters at least not in the Scripture-sence if either of these powers be essential to such a scripture-Scripture-Presbyter And then in vain do they challenge the power of such Presbyters when they are not those Presbyters to whom those powers belong And certainly it is much more certain and prudent to argue from the nature of the power given to them that they are Presbyters in the Scripture-sence who have the power given them which is supposed to belong to scripture-Scripture-Presbyters and on the contrary that they are not Presbyters in the Scripture-sence who have not that power given them than that they must have the power because they have the name and that intended in the Scripture signification Names are imposed arbitrarily to signifie what men please and if they please by the name Presbyter to signifie him whom the Scriptures call so yet still it is to be supposed to signifie that sense which they understand to be the sence of Scripture though they be mistaken in the sense of it And it is certain that the name cannot alter the nature of the power which is given to them though the nature of that power may alter the justice of their title to the name If they have less power given them than should belong to scripture-Scripture-Presbyters it must certainly follow that the name would be given them improperly and certainly our Adversaries themselves cannot think it just that they who are improperly called Scripture-Presbyters should claim the priviledges of them who are called so properly § XXVI INDEED if the nature of the powers were mutually inseparable it would be reasonable to argue that where one was given both must be so or if at least on one side this inseparableness held it were just to conclude that the other power must be given if this be that from which that other is inseparable but not on the contrary that the separable power must be given because that power is given from which it is supposed to be separable And on this account there is indeed some colour of reason to presume that where a higher power is given the inferior is given also because usually the Inferior is included in the Superior though it be not always so But it will by no means follow that a Superior power must follow that which is Inferior because here can be no pretence either of inseparable connexion or of inclusion Now this is plainly the case here All that our Adversaries can directly prove to have been given to their first Predecessors who received their Orders in the Communion of the Church is only a power of administring the Sacraments in their own Persons But the power of giving this power to others is certainly a power of a higher nature than the power of administring in their own Persons If therefore both these powers be essential to a scripture-Scripture-Presbyter and they cannot prove that any more than one of them was given to their Predecessors neither by any express donation nor by any inseparable connexion with that which was expresly given it will clearly follow that they were not made Presbyters in that sence which our Adversaries understand to be the sence of the Scriptures and therefore that they cannot claim the priviledges which they conceive due to Scripture-Presbyters And for my part I do not understand a more prudent Rule for distinguishing when the negative way of arguing is seasonable from this Topick that neither power is given because it is
of the reasons that required them § XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV The unreasonableness of this way of arguing § XXVI There were then circumstances proper to that Age which required particular condescension § XXVII Though the Negative Argument be not good yet the Positive is that the actual claim of Governours then is a good Presumption that they had a right to the Power so claimed by them § XXVIII Persons extraordinarily gifted at length made subject to the ordinary Governours of the Church § XXIX XXX XXXI This derivation of Power rather from Governours than from the People agreeable to those Precedents whom the Primitive Christians were mâ—st likely to imitate § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV A way proposed for accommodating the several interests concerned in Ordinations according to the practice of those times § XXXVI XXXVII The Apostles unlikely to confer this right of Government on the People if left by God to their own Liberty according to the Notions which then prevailed among the Christians § XXXVIII Remarks tending to the satisfaction of the lovers of Truth and Peace 1. This way of arguing from the actual establishments of God as it is much more modest so it is also more secure for finding out the right of Government than any conjectures we can make from the reason of the thing § XXXIX XL. 2. Though the People had this inherent right of Government originally yet it cannot exclude a right of God who may when be pleases resume this right into his own hands § XLI 3. If the people ever had such a right originally yet all that has been done since for alienating that right which could be done § XLII p. 423. CHAP. XX. 2. This Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God by the Mediation of those men to whom it was at first committed by him The Negative to be proved That none can be presumed to have a call from God without at least an approbation from the Supreme visible Governours § I. 1. It is in reason and by the Principles of visible Government requisite that this Negative be granted for the Conviction of false Pretenders to a Power received from God 1. It is necessary that Pretenders should be discovered § II III IV. 2. It is also requisite that the means of discovering Pretenders be notorious to all even to ordinary capacities § V VI. 3. These notorious means for discovering Pretenders must be common to all Ages of the Church not proper only to that of the Apostles § VII 4. Hence it follows that God left them to the same ordinary means of judging concerning the right of Spiritual Governours as had been used in judging concerning the right of their temporal Superiors § VIII IX 5. By this Rule of judging concerning Spiritual right the same way as we judg concerning temporal none can be presumed to have this Power but they who have received it from them to whom it was at first committed § X XI 6. This Inference will especially hold when access to the Supreme is most difficult § XII XIII This is the case of Ecclesiastical Government § XIV Application to the Principles of a Modern Writer § XV XVI 2. Our Brethren must be obliged in equity to grant this way because they cannot pitch on a more certain way for the tryal of Pretenders § XVII 1. They cannot do it by deriving their Authority from God immediately § XVIII XIX XX. 2. They cannot do it by pretending to receive their Authority immediately from the Scriptures independently on the Act of their ordinary Superiors § XXI An Objection answered § XXII p. 438. CHAP. XXI 3. This Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived from those men to whom it was at first committed to the Age we live in without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from thâ—se who had Authority to give it them § I. 1. This Authority could not be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own times Neither by their own Persons nor by their deed of Gift nor by their Writings § II. 2. It hence follows that the only way they could use for conveying this Authority to others after their decease must be by appointing sufficient Substitutes who might act for them after their departure § III. 3. The same reasons which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey this Power to any who did not live in their own Age do also prove it impossible for any of their Successors to do so § IV V. 4. This Negative Argument will only hold concerning the only substitutes of the Apostles and concerning them it will hold That they who have not received Power from them who are alone substituted by the Apostles to convey their power to others cannot at all receive any power from the Apostles § VI VII VIII IX 5. That this Negative Argument applied to any particular Age will hold concerning the only substitutes remaining in that particular Age. Bishops were the only substitutes of the Apostles then remaining when our Brethren began their Innovations § X. p. 476. CHAP. XXII 4. The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first Dividers of the several parties had never a Power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were ordeined § VIII p. 483. CHAP. XXIII The Objection concerning the Opinion prevailing in the modern Schools that Bishops and Presbyters differed not in Order but Degree Answ. 1. It seems rather to have been Interest than Conscience that inclined men to the belief of this Opinion This cleared from a short History of this Opinion § I II III IV V. Answ. 2. Though this Opinion had been received more universally than it appears it was by the Multitude yet it is not likely that it would be so received by the Bishops upon whose intention the validity of the Orders conferred by them must depend § VI. Answ. 3. Though the Bishops of those Ages had been universally of this Opinion yet it does not thence follow that they must have given the Presbyters ordeined by them the Power of
which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey their Power to any who did not live in their own Age does also prove it impossible for any of their successors to do so They also cannot be supposed capable of acting in their own Persons when they cease to be in their own Persons and therefore can only be capable of acting by their substitutes whom they have intrusted with their Power and none can be taken for their substitutes but they who have been made so by their personal act when they were alive Which will perfectly reach the Negative for which I am concerned at present that they cannot be taken for the Apostles substitutes nor for the substitutes of any of their successors in later Ages who have not been substituted by them by a personal act and that what has not been done since by any substitute either of the Apostles or of any of their successors cannot be taken for the act of any of them and therefore cannot derive any Authority from them § V THESE things are as applicable to the Successors of the Apostles in every Age respectively as they are to the Apostles themselves As therefore in the Age succeeding the Apostles nothing could be done by the Apostles but what was done by some of them to whom the Apostles had committed their Power by a personal act in the Apostolical Age it self So neither in the third Age could any thing be taken for the Act of the Successors of the Apostles but what was done by Persons Authorized by their personal act in the preceding Age whilest those Successors were yet living And the same reasoning may be brought down through all the intermediate Ages to that wherein we live at present so that nothing ought to be taken for the Act of the Apostles in our present Age but what is done by them who have been lawfully substituted by them who have received their Power from their other lawful substitutes in the several Ages respectively by personal substitution of each Predecessor respectively whilest he was yet living and therefore no such Act can convey the Authority of the Apostles to any who is ambitious of pretending to it in our present Age. § VI 4. THEREFORE the force of this Negative Argument consisting in this that that cannot be the Apostles Act in a later Age which is not the Act of any of those who derive their substitution from them by personal Acts in the several Ages it will not hold but only in the only substitutes For supposing the Apostles substituted many in the first Age as certainly they did it will not follow that he who has not received his Authority from the Succession of Jerusalem for example has therefore not received it from the Apostles at all because he may have received it from the Succession of Antioch or any other Apostolical See But considering the whole complex of substitutes in every Age certainly the reason will hold that he who has derived his Authority from none of them must as certainly fail of deriving his Authority from the Apostles as if he had lived in the Age immediately succeeding the Apostles and yet had not received his Authority from any of them who had in the former Age received their Authority by a personal Act of the Apostles themselves The reasoning still holds the same how many soever the Ages of Succession are Neither can any Authority be given by the Apostles in the fifteenth Century which is not given by their substitutes then existing nor can they then be taken for their Successors who have not been substituted by several personal Acts of their immediate Predecessors through all the foregoing Period § VII AND this I therefore take for the imprudence of managing this Argument hitherto that recourse has been always had to the Primitive times as if the Succession had not been as much interrupted by a failure in later Ages as if it had failed then By which way of proceeding they both weakened the evidence of the Argument and withal made it less popular They weakened the Argument both as to its strength and as to its evidence As to its strength because what had indeed Succession then might fail of it in after Ages And therefore though our Adversaries Hypothesis had been true that single Presbyters had the Power of ordeining others given them when they were made Presbyters and therefore that the Persons ordeined by them then had been validly ordeined yet it is very possible that their Succession might fail afterwards and that later Presbyters might never have that Power given them which if they have not that is alone sufficient to disanul their present Ordinations And therefore the securest way of proving the validity of present Ordinations is to prove the uninterruptedness of their Succession down to our modern times not to rest contented with what was in the beginning but might have been since interrupted § VIII THEY weakened the evidence of the Argument by resolving it into Primitive Records in which way of proceeding it is very possible that many Records might have been lost nay it is most certain that many were so which though it be no Argument at all to prove that any thing was not from the beginning which we do not find mentioned in our remaining Records yet it is certainly a weakening the evidence of the Succession if the tryal be resolved into such Records as might have miscarried As certainly no secular Magistrate of a Corporation in this Age could make his title so clear if he were to prove it from the Records of all his Predecessors since the Charter was granted which may very well have miscarried in a much shorter Succession than that which is requisite for justifying our present Ordinations as if he be immediately allowed to resolve his title into the Charter as it has been found in unquestionable Practice and into his immediate Predecessors And this is the rather solid because it is a Principle agreed on for the security of all Governments to presume they came from the beginning unless there appear very probable evidence to the contrary though possibly their being from the beginning cannot be expresly proved from Primitive Records after the miscarriages of so many Generations And when God was pleased to settle a Government among men it is most likely that he would suit it as he did many other things of far less importance to Humane understanding and even to those of the vulgar who are as much concerned in Government as the Learned and that he would accordingly expect their Obedience according to the Rules of Humane equity And there is less reason to believe that he would oblige Ecclesiastical Government to depend on express Records than Secular not only because it is designed much more lasting than any Secular form of Government and Records are more apt to miscarry in a longer tract of time but also because the Persecutions to which they are exposed more than any other Societies
Mission and consequently the comfort of their Ordinances which must by the foregoing Principles depend on this validity of their Mission this will abundantly answer my design It will let them see that at least in the second Generation no comfort of Church-Ordinances can be had out of the Episcopal Communion Which will both let them see how much their Congregations must fail of being compleat Churches and consequently fail of the comforts and Priviledges of such Churches when they are not able to maintein a Succession and must withal let them of this Generation see at least so many of them as have not Ministers Episcopally ordeined their obligation in interest as well as Conscience to return to the Communion from which they have fallen as they desire all those comforts they might expect by being in a Church And even for them who at present enjoy such Ministers as have had Episcopal Ordination this may also let them see how much better it were to return to the Communion of the Church soon when they must be at length necessitated to return at the death of that particular Minister at least they cannot hope for another ordeined as he is to succeed him and withal how unlikely it is that their Churches should be the only Churches beloved by God when they are in imminent danger of that which God had threatned in the Revelations to those Churches which had provoked him of having their Candlestick removed from them of failing immediately in the next Succession § IV THAT therefore which I am to prove is that neither the first Dividers nor any among them now who have received the Order of Presbytery by Episcopal Authority had ever any such Power given them as might enable them to ordein others on account of their being made only Presbyters Whether they might have given them that Power I am not at present obliged to enquire It suffices at present that they have it not Their not having it is alone sufficient to disanul all they do on supposition of it Nor am I concerned whether they be obliged by God to give with the Order of Presbytery the Power of Ordination No doubt our Adversaries will say that they are so obliged But does it therefore follow that they have actually done it because they are obliged to do it May not the Episcopal Ordeiners fail of this as well as our Adversaries pretend them to have failed of many other Obligations If they do indeed fail and do not actually give them that power of ordeining others which our Adversaries suppose them obliged to give them all that can be said is that their Ordeiners are to blame for it and responsible to God for it not that the Persons ordeined by them have it but that they are wronged of it because it is not given to them And is not the very supposition of their being wronged of it of their not having it given them a certain Argument that actually they have it not unless possibly they suppose that either they may have it without being given or have it from God immediately though they cannot pretend to have it from Persons Authorized by him But both these pretences have been prevented by what has been already discoursed And their not having this Power on what account soever they be hindred from having it is alone sufficient to invalidate all they do that cannot be done without it § V IN order hereunto therefore I suppose 1. That they have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners This plainly appears from what has been already proved that their Ordeiners are they and they alone who have represented Gods Person in dealing with them and God has not appointed any other means of dealing immediately with them in these later Ages and therefore all that Power which can be thought to come to them originally from God must come immediately from their Ordeiners § VI 2. THEREFORE I suppose further that they have actually received from their Superiors nothing but what their Superiors did actually intend to give them One would think this should be very clear that they can receive nothing but what is given them and that nothing can be given but what is intended to be given This is indeed the great design of the equity of the Law to take care that contracts be observed according to the presumable intention of the Parties that made them and the dealing is then thought most fair and equal when all that is given that can be presumed to have been intended by a fair dealer and when nothing more is extorted by the other Party whose interest may make him challenge what was never designed for him nay cannot in any prudence be presumed to have been designed But for my present Cause I am not concerned whether this be true It suffices that nothing be given by them concerning which they may be presumed that they did intend not to give it And though it were possible that supposing the Ordeiners were obliged to give the Power of ordeining others when they made Presbyters the Law might presume that they did actually intend to do so though their secret intentions were to do otherwise because the Law is always charitable to judg the best where there is no evidence to the contrary and therefore might presume in such a case that every man intends really as he is obliged to intend yet still the reason why even in such a case this might be reasonable is not because they can be supposed to give what they never intend to give but because they may in this way of proceeding be presumed to intend what they do not really intend which is still very reconcilable with what I say that their gift is to be measured by their presumed intention And therefore to prevent all possible exceptions of this kind I do intend to ground my Argument not on the secret but the presumed intention of these Ordeiners I am speaking of and shall accordingly shew that the Bishops who ordeined these revolting Presbyters ought to be presumed to have intended not to give them a Power of ordeining others § VII TO this purpose I suppose 3. That as indeed the Law is always charitable to presume that every man intends as it becomes him to intend so it is withal prudent to presume his actual intention not from what others do think will become him no nor from what will really become him in the judgment of God himself who is infallible but from what the Person may be presumed likely to judg to become him according to the general sense of men in his circumstances And therefore our Brethren must not judg of the intention of the Bishop by the real will of God much less by their own Notions concerning Gods will who cannot pretend to be more infallible than the Bishop himself but by the judgment of the Bishop himself that he must be presumed to intend what according to the Principles
Bishops how great Assertors soever of the identity of their Order with that of Presbyters ever did renounce or could renounce without making their Government unpracticable § XI Though the Bishops had received their Power from their Election by men yet that would not suffice to make valid any Acts of the same men without their consent after their Election § XII XIII This right of Presidency might hold though the whole right of their Power had been purely Humane § XIV But supposing that right Divine all that men can do can be only to determine the Person not to confine the Power The reasoning here used will proceed though Bishops had been made by Presbyters alone without the concurrence and Consecration of other Bishops § XV. The Primitive Bishops seem indeed to have been made so by Presbyters without Bishops § XVI BUT though we should suppose those Persons then to have been altogether of the same mind which they conceive those to have been of who lived in the Apostles times though we suppose not only that they thought it fit that the whole power of the Bishop should be given to Presbyters but that they had actually given it them suppose we that the Bishop had no more Authority reserved to him than only to preside in their Assemblies that is to call them and to fit in the first place of them when they were convened that is supposing that the Bishops Authority were no more than what was consistent with the Aristocratical form of Government which they conceive to have been observed in the Primitive times though this supposition be notoriously false concerning the Ages I am speaking of yet I do not see how even this way our Brethren can defend the validity of their Ordinations by single Presbyters especially as it is practised among them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no power can be given I do not mean only that it cannot be given Canonically but that it cannot be given validly but to Persons who are at least in conjunction with those from whom they receive their power then at least when they actually receive it Which will consequently null all the Ordinations which have been made in the state of separation and will therefore make it impossible for any Schism which is made by single Presbyters in the way that has been observed by our Adversaries to maintein it self with any pretence of Authority beyond one generation And this must sure be very acceptable to those generous Spirits who are more solicitous for Catholick Vnity than for the party in which they were born § II AND that this is so I shall endeavour to prove in two regards in regard of the power that must be allowed to the Bishop even as the President of these Assemblies and in regard of that which must be allowed to other Presbyters as fellow-members of the same Assemblies 1. In regard of the power of the Bishop as President of those Assemblies For by the Fundamental Principles even of Aristocratical Government it is certain 1. That no power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated that is in our case of the whole Presbytery It is against the interest of all Societies and the principles of all Government that single Members even of those who have otherwise power in conjunction with others to dispose of the Government of a Society should be allowed the power of disposing of it in their single capacities But it is peculiarly against the right of a Polyarchical Government because no particular Member has the right of the whole Society and therefore cannot dispose of the Government of it which whether it be supreme or subordinate must imply either a power over the whole Society or a power necessarily derived from that which is so Even subordinate Authority must be derived from the supreme that there may be such an essential dependence upon it as is necessary for the safety of all Societies This will therefore make it a Nullity in the thing if single Members do presume to dispose of that which is not their own right alone but the right of the whole Body § III AND 2. As by the nature of this Government the right of it must be supposed to be in the whole Body so neither can any act be presumed to be the act of the whole Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies Though every particular Member for himself should signifie his own consent yet it is not taken for the act of the Society till it be also signified in an Assembly and it is taken for the act of the whole Society if it pass them in their Assembly though without the consent of every particular Person so it have the prevailing vote nay though that prevailing vote be not the greater part of the Society so it be only of the greater part of those which are present in such Assemblies For the reason of this I say no more at present but that it is found necessary for all Multitudes to agree on these Rules for settling Assemblies and for giving this power to what is done in such Assemblies to conclude the whole Societies and to the prevailing vote of those Assemblies to conclude the whole Assemblies before they can pass out of the state of a Multitude into that of a Society that is before they can have any Government that can solidly unite them at least before they can have any Government that can be practicable The same reasons which make this fit to be agreed on in any one Society are common to all Societies as Societies and therefore must be allowed the same force in those that are Ecclesiastical as in those that are Civil as they are capable of being administred in this Life And therefore God himself cannot be supposed to have made a Government even of his own institution practicable till he have settled these Rules of administring it And when they are once settled however they come to be so whether by Gods own appointment or by the consent of the People it will then be very just as well as fit to conclude that what is done on pretence of the right of the Society out of such an Assembly cannot validly confer any right of the Society because on the Principles of the agreement on these Assemblies they are not to be reputed as acts of the Society And certainly as nothing but the Society it self can in Justice make a valid conveyance of its own right so it is not conceivable how the Society it self can do it by any thing but its own act Besides the very reason of agreeing on these Assemblies as the most convenient means for administring the power of the Society seems to be purposely to preclude all surreptitious acts that might be pretended in the name of the Society if designing men might be allowed in their pretences concerning what might be transacted privately And therefore the main
independence on him Nay the Emperour Valentinian though he was chosen by the Army yet when he was chosen he would not endure to be obliged by them even to the nomination of a Colleague though he after did it freely So though the Presbyteries had a power in the vacancy of Sees to do all things necessary for the Succession of a new Bishop yet by the Rules of all successive Governments they can only be supposed to have it in trust and that trust must be presumed limited according to the design of the power by which it was committed to them It does not therefore follow that they can forbear the Election of a Successor and much less that they can justifie their Assembling and Acting without him when he is once named Their power may then for all this expire and they return to the condition of ordinary Subjects whose acts I believe our Adversaries themselves cannot think valid if they presume to give Authority And the reason is plain because they cannot be supposed still to have the power after they have given it out of their own hands And therefore afterwards they can neither validly exercise it nor validly dispose of it otherwise against the fundamental Laws for settling Succession in the Society for which they are supposed to be intrusted § XIV THIS Argument will hold though this right of Presidency were purely humane Yet even so Persons who have given the power out of their own hands cannot recall it again at pleasure but must be obliged to stand to their own act And as this will oblige such as were at first free if any were such in matters alienable by them and those by whom the Laws for Succession were first made so much more will it oblige posterity who must find themselves already confined by the acts of their Predecessors These can pretend only such a right as they have received and therefore if they exceed that they usurp a right which was never theirs and therefore all they do must be invalid Indeed if the supreme right of managing their own Assemblies had been by divine right unalienable from the Primitive Presbyters they who once had it might therefore challenge it again notwithstanding any Contracts whatsoever for parting with it because the Contracts themselves were invalid and therefore could not deprive them of a right which they had before they made those Contracts but must leave them in the same condition wherein they found them But what is that to Posterity Suppose the modern Presbyters of the Ages I am speaking of had never given their â—ishops the power of presiding over their Assemblies Suppose we that they were not obliged to stand to the Contracts of their Predecessors in this matter All that would thence follow is only this that they are now in the same condition as if those Contracts had never been made But though they have not alienated a right that does not prove they have it unless they had it antecedently to the alienation But that is a thing posterity cannot pretend to They never had this right given them and therefore cannot pretend to have it though they never alienated it And they are at least thus far obliged by the acts of their predecessors as they were thereby hindred from having this power given them whether they be or be not obliged by those acts of theirs which may pretend to have alienated it from them And till our Brethrens Predecessors who were then ordeined can prove that they once had this right given them I shall not be concerned whether they have alienated it or not nor consequently whether they be bound to stand to the alienation of their Predecessors § XV BUT if the power of Episcopacy be Divine and all that men can do in the Case be only to determine the Person not to confine his power then certainly it will follow that though men may this way make him which is all our Brethren can pretend to prove yet they may not therefore after he is made either deprive him or make another or exercise the Government themselves without him as freely as before For as soon as that power is given him by God they immediately become his Subjects and have then no more power to prescribe limits to his Authority than they have to do so to the Authority of God himself Nor am I here obliged to take the advantage I might take from the peculiar way by which I have proved Ecclesiastical power to be derived from God It is sufficient for my purpose that it be no otherwise from God than that is of every supreme Civil Magistrate It is not usual for Kings to be invested in their Office by other Kings but by their Subjects Yet when they are invested that does not in the least prejudice the absoluteness of their Monarchy where the fundamental constitutions of the respective places allow it them much less does it give any power over them to the Persons by whom they are invested But they are then and afterwards as much his Subjects as any others are who have no part in the Solemnity And therefore though it had been true that the Presbyters at first had not only elected but placed the Bishop over themselves as St. Hierome expresses it nay supposing those same Presbyters who had chosen him should have also used all the ceremonies of Consecration to him that they had invested him in his Office by Prayer and Imposition of hands Eutych Annal. Alex. Ed. Oxon. p. 31. as Eutychius pretends nay supposing that no Bishops had any more to do in his Consecration than Kings have to do in the Inaugurations of our ordinary Kings all this I say being supposed which is more than they can prove by any competent testimony it will not thence follow that those same Presbyters who chose and Consecrated him must have any more power over him or to act any thing without him or to withdraw their obedience from him after he is so chosen and Consecrated than those same Persons have over the Princes who are Inaugurated by them and all their presumptuous practices of such a power may notwithstanding all this be not only as punishable but as invalid as the like presumptions would be in the Inaugurations of Princes Nor is it only true that this may be so though that alone be sufficient to weaken our Adversaries confidence in this way of arguing but indeed it must be so whenever the Person so invested is supposed to be invested in the supreme power and whenever the Society over which he is placed is also independent on all other Societies Such a Person can never be placed in his power if he may not be placed in it by them who after he is placed in it must themselves be his Subjects as much as others unless he be placed in it by his Predecessor which no Society can safely depend on for a constant Rule of Succession In his own Society he can therefore have none of
his own Order that can perform the Ceremony to him because we suppose him to be supreme and there cannot be two such in one Society And if he must depend on the supreme powers of the neighbouring Societies for an investiture so that he could not be validly invested without them this would both be dangerous in suspicious times and would besides be very prejudicial to the liberty of the particular Society for which such a Governour were concerned § XVI AND therefore I for my part am so little solicitous for any consequence that may hence be inferred to the prejudice of my Cause as that I am apt to think that this must have been the way observed at first in the making of Bishops how absolute soever I conceive them to have been when they were once made and how invalid soever I think the actings of Presbyters would be which were done without his consent after his Consecration though they were those very Presbyters by whom he had been Consecrated And I wish our Adversaries had Authorities suitable to their confidence either better than conjectures or if no better yet more ancient than the time of St. Hierome whose contemporary he was who wrote the Commentaries under the name of St. Ambrose much more than the very exceptionable testimony and Age of Eutychius This seems best to agree with the absoluteness of particular Churches before they had by compacts united themselves under Metropolitans and Exarchs into Provincial and Diocesan Churches as the word Diocese was understood in the Eastern parts in the language of that Age. And this seems to have been fitted for the frequent Persecutions of those earlier Ages when every Church was able to secure its own Succession by its own power without depending on the uncertain opportunities of the meeting of the Bishops of the whole Province And the alteration of this practice the giving the Bishops of the Province an interest in the choice of every particular Colleague seems not to have been so much for want of power in the particular Churches to do it as for the security of the compacts that they might be certain of such a Colleague as would observe them whose Communicatory Letters they might therefore not scruple to receive when they had first by their own act satisfied themselves of the trustiness of his Person before his Consecration However the matter was I cannot but think that it was the interest of the neighbouring Bishops in the correspondence of every particular Bishop that first occasioned and procured their interest in his Election Nor can I tell how the Succession could have been so secure otherwise unless every Bishop had named and constituted his Successor in his Life time for which they had precedents in the Successions of the Philosophers in imitation whereof I have already observed how probable it is that these Ecclesiastical Successions were framed But then withall as that way was uncertain so when the Philosophers failed to nominate their own Successors then the Election was in the Schools But this would even then only warrant such acts of those Presbyteries which held correspondence with their own Bishops and with the Episcopal Communion but in these modern Ages it can only excuse those to whom the power was returned by the Bishops who had been peaceably possessed of it for many Centuries before This I note that it may not be drawn into a precedent now any further than it is fit and reasonable CHAP. XXV The Nullity of the same Ordinations proved from the right of Episcopal Presbyteries as Presbyteries THE CONTENTS 2. Even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government from the right which Episcopal Presbyteries ought to have in giving Orders as they are considered as Presbyteries § I II. This proved by these degrees 1. Though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is that correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination § III IV V VI. 2. Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in which he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them § VII 3. The Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders Applied to single Presbyters § VIII To whole Presbyteries made up of overvoted single Presbyters § IX X XI 4. No Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in any particular Episcopal Church as Presbyterian without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries § XII A smaller over-voted number of Presbyters cannot validly dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries § XIII XIV XV. The power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter is a right of the Presbytery in common by the Principles of Aristocratical Government § XVI XVII XVIII XIX An Objection answered § XX XXI XXII Another Objection answered § XXIII XXIV Retorted § XXV The reason of the Retortion given § XXVI § I BUT 2. There is also another just exception against the validity of our Adversaries Ordinations even from the right of Aristocratical Government and that is from the right of their Fellow-Presbyters as well as themselves If we should allow the right of Ordination to Presbyters as Presbyters as our Adversaries desire yet that will not justifie the validity of the Ordinations of single Presbyters no nor of a smaller part in opposition to the greater by which it is over-voted And our Adversaries cannot defend their Ordinations at present any better than by the single acts of particular Presbyters over-voted by the greater part of the Presbyteries of which they were originally Members Their first Ministers which began the separation were much the smaller part of the respective Presbyteries to which they were related And though they might if they had continued in the Communion of the Church have had their single votes in all the acts of Government and the disposal of all the Offices which by the practice then obteining were allowed to the whole Presbyteries yet they could never have obteined that the Offices disposed of by their single votes must have been validly disposed of and ratified by the rest by whom they were over-voted And sure they cannot expect to be gainers by their unpeaceableness that their single votes must be esteemed of greater value out of the Church than in it that they who could not have made Presbyters in the Church against the prevailing vote of their Brethren should be allowed to make as many as they please on condition they will divide from their Brethren and make themselves the Heads
the Scripture sense any otherwise than as they thought the Presbyters in the modern sense justified by the Scripture If this was the reason as in all likelihood it must according to the sense of those times then certainly their prime design was only to give that power which was then granted to Presbyters which will not include the power of ordeining others as I have already shewn Besides it cannot be presumed that their design was to make Presbyters in the Scripture sense any farther than as they thought Scripture precedent obliging to their own times If they thought it lawful for them to alienate the right which originally belonged to them if at least they thought such an Alienation valid when done however unlawful to be done why should they rather think of retrieving the Scripture-practice in this particular than in those of the Deaconesses and the feasts of Love c. to which no parties think themselves obliged at present § XXI I CANNOT but think that this was really St. Hieromes sense of this matter Ad Euagr. who never thought himself obliged by his singular opinion concerning the Primitive form of Ecclesiastical Government to make any disturbance in the present settlement And the reason he gives for the change that it was for the avoiding Schism was a commendable reason and as much concerning his own and all future times as it did those wherein this change was first supposed to have been made Schism is still as dangerous to the Church and Episcopacy is still as prudent an expedient for preventing the occasion of Schism arising from parity now and for ever as it was then And the decree of the whole World which he mentions as the Authority by which this change was made if it do not include the Apostles or some such extraordinary Officers who in those times had alone the power of making such a Decree as he there speaks of which might oblige the whole World and in whose time the expressions he makes use of for expressing this Schism that one said he was of Paul another of Cephas another of Apollos were first and most literally fulfilled and it is unlikely that they would defer the remedy so long after the occasion as our Adversaries suppose besides that the mistake of mens thinking that the Disciples baptized by them were their own is not likely to have continued so long and to have prevailed so universally as to occasion a general Decree against it after the death of all the Apostles when St. Paul himself had so expresly condemned it so long before If I say the whole World concerned in this business did not include the Apostles and it is most certain that it cannot exclude them yet certainly it must have included all those extraordinary persons of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who besides their intimate acquaintance with the Apostles were themselves indued with great and Apostolical gifts and as they cannot be presumed ignorant of the Apostles mind in a matter of fact so notorious as this was of Government so they cannot be presumed unfaithful to their trust in a matter of this consequence as to make a Decree directly contrary to an establishment of the Apostles designed by them to be unalterable and this Decree an universal one without contradiction of any one of these Apostolical Persons § XXII WHATEVER our Brethren may think of these things now yet certainly St. Hierome could not on these terms think this change invalid Nor consequently could any of them think so who were in this matter guided by St. Hierome And if so we have no reason to presume that they must have intended to restore the antiquated Scripture-right of Presbyters which if it prove true must overthrow all our Adversaries Arguments for proving that Ordination was a right of Scripture-Presbyters in order to the proving the like right in Presbyters now Though it was their right then yet if it be alienable it may cease to be their right now If it were unalienable from those who once had it yet without defending the validity of any alienation they may want it now not because they alienated it but because they never had it However though it had been their design to give our present Presbyters all that right which belonged to Presbyters in the Apostles times yet certainly they who made these Presbyters are the most competent Judges of their own intentions if we will deal fairly not captiously And therefore even in this case our Adversaries should not immediately conclude that to be the right of modern Presbyters because themselves think that Presbyters in the Apostles time had it unless they could prove our modern Ordeiners to have been of their mind in this particular It suffices at present that I have shewn that it is not from the Scriptures as a Charter but from their Ordeiners as Persons Authorized by that Charter and as Authentick Expositors of it if not as to truth yet at least as to practice that they receive their Orders and therefore that the power actually received by them must not be measured by the true sence of the Scriptures but from that wherein their Ordeiners understood them But I have already proved that they who intended to make them Presbyters in the Scripture-sence did not could not suppose that the power of Ordination was the right of scripture-Scripture-Presbyters § XXIII BUT they may object further that the rights united by God are inseparable by any Humane Authority and that the power of Ordination is by God united to the other rights of Scripture Presbyters so that it was impossible to give them any one right without giving them all or to retein one without reteining all and therefore that if our present Presbyters have the power of administring the Sacraments they must not be denied the power of Ordination If our Adversaries mean that those Presbyters who had both those powers united in them by God could not be deprived of the one power without the other nor indeed of any by any Humane Authority this if it should prove true yet is a case wherein our present Ordinations are not concerned which were not received in those times wherein our Adversaries pretend to prove that these two powers were so inseparably united If further they say that de jure they ought not to be separated as they will find the bare Argument from Scripture-precedent very unconcluding to this purpose they neither can prove that ever scripture-Scripture-Presbyters did ordein in separation from a President much less that smaller over-voted parts of any particular Presbyteries or any Presbyteries made up of fugitives from many did so nor if they could can they prove the precedent obliging now without some more inforcing considerations from the nature of the thing so they will not find it easie to produce better And it is at present sufficient for my purpose that they may be separated de facto though they who separate them be to blame for doing so § XXIV NOR
the Publick is indeed a more rational Argument to prove them false than such Probability as falls short of it is to prove them true § VII FOR considering God only as a Good and Prudent Governour and who withal cannot be forgetful of doing what he knows to be most Prudent as Humane Governours may it is not Credible that he should not give that Evidence of Conviction for every particular Duty which is suitable to the moment of the thing required in it that as he is by his Government obliged to value Duties differently according to their different influence on the Publick so he might accordingly secure their performance that those which are more necessary for the Publick may be principally secured which he cannot be conceived to have done if he have not proportioned their Evidence to their momentousness And therefore where a Duty doth interfere with the publick Interest though we may have some probability for it yet if the Probability be not so great as upon the account now mentioned may be expected for an Action of such consequence whatever we may think of it in regard of its Probabilities yet this will be a much more certain Argument to us that God never intended in such Circumstances to oblige us to it But to omit any further reasonings this Presumption is in it self so very Equal as that I think all Parties will acknowledg it to be so where they are unconcerned that is indeed where they are Equal Judges And as I think all Protestants will believe that that degree of Probable Appearance which might have excused an Erroneous Conscience in Practices of inferior concernment could not yet be admitted as a sufficient Apology for Ravilliac and the Powder-Traitors for their attempts against the Lives of their Princes and the welfare of their Countries so the Romanists themselves will pass the same Censure on those Laws and Severities against themselves which they call Persecution that these are less easily excusable in us than our Heresie because they are more mischievous And certainly the disturbance of the Churches Peace not only by forbearing Communion which would expire with the Persons Life but also by erecting opposite Communions which is the means to perpetuate the disturbance to all succeeding Generations would in the Judgment of every Peaceable that is indeed every truly Christian Spirit be reputed a mischief so great as that the moment of very few Propositions would be able either to excuse or make amends for it Which is sufficient to shew that it is as Safe as Wise as Pious as Politick to be favourable to the Churches Peace in judging concerning the merit of particular Controversies § VIII IN pursuance therefore of this Discourse it would concern every Conscientious Person in our Adversaries Case dissenting from the Church wherein he was Born and Baptized to Enquire Impartially 1. Whether the thing maintained by him be True or False And if upon the most accurate and Sincere Enquiry he still think it True then 2. With what degree of Evidence it appears so to him whether Certainly or only Probably and with what degree either of Certainty or Probability For it is certain that variety herein will vary the Case of the Lawfulness of the complyance of such a Person for it may be much more Lawful to suppress his sentiments in Probabilities than Certainties and in less than greater Probabilities If he conceive it Certain then 3. Whether it be also Necessary and with what degree of Necessity Whether it be only Necessary for himself who is already convinced of it or it be Necessary for others that they be convinced also For it can only be in this latter kind that any can pretend to any Obligation to divulge their Sentiments If it be conceived also necessary for others then 4. Whether it be necessary to be taught them by a Person in his Condition For it is certain that according to the difference of Mens Conditions their Obligations are also very different and some Mens Conditions may free them from those Obligations to which others may remain obnoxious If even this be so that he be the Person obliged to Teach and Propagate his different Sentiments yet 5. Whether the mischiefs naturally consequent to such an attempt be not greater than those which are likely to follow from his omission and therefore sufficient to excuse it For it is in Conscience as well as Prudence Lawful to permit a lesser Evil for avoiding a greater though it be never Lawful to incur the guilt of a Sin for avoiding any and the Obligation incumbent on us for instructing others is to be deduced from their Interest in the Truth wherein they are to be instructed and therefore where this Interest proves inconsistent with a greater there it can be no Sin but only a lesser Evil to omit it If these mischiefs should not be conceived sufficient to disoblige him then 6. Whether he be obliged any farther than only to propose it and so to leave it to the Judgment and Approbation of his Superiors I do not mean in order to the determination of his own Internal Assent but as competent Judges of what is fit to be externally transacted for the Proselyting of others Or whether he be also obliged to resist their determination when different from his own If he conceive himself obliged to resist them then 7. How far he is so obliged Whether only so far as to suffer himself rather to be cast out of Communion than to comply Or whether he may also be Active in withdrawing his own Communion even before he is Judicially Excommunicated Or whether being Excommunicated for such a Cause he be not so much as Obliged to give Passive Obedience to such Censures of his Lawful Ordinary Superiors but may also be Active not only in encouraging and favouring but also in erecting an opposite Society seeing that if he himself should prove the Person mistaken as he has no reason to think himself more Infallible than his Superiors this is a way to perpetuate the Quarrel and that in such a Case very Injuriously Especially 8. If he be a Person to whom the power of Governing and maintaining Ecclesiastical Societies either by an administration of the Sacraments in his own Person or by providing for an Ordinary Succession in Ordaining others has never been in an ordinary way communicated which is generally the Case of our Seperating Brethren Whether this supposed Justice of his Cause can excuse or warrant such an arrogating of a Power never received Or whether he can expect that God will countenance him in such his Usurpations § IX IF all these Enquiries were made with that accurateness and exactness with which they ought and would be examined by every truly Pious and Peaceable Person though Men whilst they are Men might still be supposed likely to dissent in matters truly Disputable and of inferior concernment yet I believe the Cases would be found very rare wherein themselves would Judg it safe
the present possessors of the power of Government yet that would give no title to the discoverers of that failure and therefore cannot justifie their proceedings on presumption of such a title from Vsurpation and that even in this Case there is no reason to expect that God should supply in equity what they cannot justifie by a Legal claim § XX 1. THEN It is necessary for the security of visible Government as such that a presumptive title be not rejected but on very evident proofs to the contrary By a presumptive title I mean such a one as the first Innovators found settled when they began their Innovations especially if they themselves had formerly submitted to it and found all who might pretend competition with it submitting to it also nay if they found it unanimously received without any accountable appearance of force or fraud in the first Originals of it This was plainly the Case of our Dissenters in relation to Episcopal Government from which they made their Separation They cannot so much as pretend any other place where any other form of Government had been derived in a Succession from the Apostles to those times They can mention no place where the Bishops were not actually possessed of their § V Power with the consent and submission of the Presbyters themselves nay and the people also and indeed of all those who may be pretended to have been injured by them and who had therefore been concerned to interrupt the peaceableness of the prescription which might in time go far to legitimate their enjoyments before so long a time might pass them as might serve for a prescription All Laws of all Societies do presume in favour of such a title § XXI AND allowing it no more than the force of a presumption yet so it self it is the interest of all Government that want of evidence of its original Right be not allowed alone for a sufficient reason for any to call the Justice of it in Question at least not so far to question it as to venture to oppose it in practice It is otherwise Morally impossible that any Government should pass unquestionable to many successions and by how much the more men usually think it better grounded by its long continuance it must indeed be more liable to exception if the inevidence of its original Right be allowed to be a just exception against it Length of time will either obliterate the original Records or make them accidentally obscure in things wherein they were very clear when they were first written by making alterations in the Tongue and Customs and Opinions of the Age then alluded to Which changes though they be insensible in the particular degrees by which they were made yet it cannot be expected otherwise but that they must grow extremely considerable in the process of a long time In this regard it is for the interest of all Societies whatsoever that want of evidence be not allowed for sufficient to question any part of the challenge of the present supreme visible Governours of the Societies without very evident proof to the contrary § XXII AND it cannot be supposed agreeable to Gods will that when God was founding a Society which was to continue through all ages of the World he should make the conveyance of Authority in it to depend on such means as should be Morally impossible to be so conveyed or that the right of Government should in course grow more questionable in those times which should need its being more unquestionable when both Subjects would grow more unruly and a coercive power should be therefore more necessary than it was at first when they were of themselves more dutifully disposed and when withal the ordinary Governours should want those extraordinary Credentials which recommended the Authority of the Apostles and Apostolical Ages Yet this very presumption if it hold will overthrow all that our Adversaries can say to clear themselves from the guilt of Schism They cannot say that the Scripture forbad them the use of their Authority in things indifferent but only that it does not appear to them that it allowed them to use it § XXIII BUT though this inevidence be not allowable by the fundamental principles of Government to question any part of the Authority in those who are truly invested with it yet why will they say may not the inevidence of particular Persons being lawfully invested in the right of Government excuse us from duty to such Persons concerning whom it does not appear that they are our lawful Governours This will serve their purpose For they need not be solicitous concerning their Duty to Government if they may be excused from Duty to all Persons pretending to a right to govern them and there will be no Persons to whom they will be obliged to pay any Duty if this inevidence of the Legal manner of their coming by their Office may be allowed as sufficient to excuse them from their Duty For this the Scripture will not do but it will be further necessary to be acquainted with the History of every particular Persons Ordination and not only of all in this Age but of all in all the Ages which might have passed between this and that of the Apostles especially of all those Persons in each of them from whom our present Orders are derived But this is a thing which no Records are kept of nor if any had been kept are we secure of their conveyance to us at such a distance in an ordinary way or do we think Providence obliged to secure them to us by an extraordinary one It must therefore be granted further by those Principles whereby the conveyance of any Government to Posterity is secured that no inevidence of this kind can excuse Subjects from their Duty even to present Governours especially when it is otherwise known in general that if the Canons and Constitutions of the Church were observed the Persons ordained according to such Canons must have been validly ordained and that all the Ordained as well as the Ordainers were obliged in interest to have the Canons observed without which they must have weakened their title to the benefits and Priviledges of their Orders so uncanonically received § XXIV THESE are such presumptions on which the Successions of all Government and all the Authority of future Governours in the several Ages of Succession do subsist and which no Society allows to be questionable in the Case of any particular Governour without particular express proof of a failure in his particular Case Mat. xxiii 2 3. And certainly the Scribes and Pharisees who in our Saviours time sate in Moses's Chair and are therefore supposed by him to have the Authority of Moses could not possibly make out their Succession at that distance and after so many revolutions of their state and so great miscarriage both of their Discipline and Records which must needs have been occasioned by those Revolutions by greater assurances than these are § XXV I CONFESS
on the Persons who were to be tryed Though it is also very observable that even in that Age wherein these extraordinary means were used yet because they were not evident to any but them to whom they were made at least not certainly therefore even then they were not intended immediately for the Multitude but for the satisfaction of the Ordeiners who when they were themselves by these means informed of the qualifications of the Persons to be ordeined then invested them with the Powers So that as it is most probable even then that it was not their gifts of which these extraordinary discoveries were only testimonies but the Solemnities of this investiture that immediately gave them the Power it self so it is much more certain that in this way of proceeding the judgment of the ordeiners concerning the sufficiency of these evidences and the testimony given by them by the act of ordination it self were even then the only assurances by which the vulgar were enabled to judg concerning the Authority of any who were placed over them even by God himself And therefore in this way of tryal none could be presumed to have Authority from God but they whom the ordinary Governours judged to have received it Which will as to all intents of Practice oblige them to as near a dependence on the ordinary Governours of the Church as if they had received their Authority from those Governours themselves And certainly the reason will be much more cogent to oblige them to a dependence on Governours who can make out no better a title to the Call it self than what they can receive from the Governours than those who might pretend that their obligation to depend on them was only for their approbation in the exercise of the Authority committed to them not for deriving the Authority it self These if their pretence was true could only be punished for the disorderliness of their proceeding but they who derive their Power not from any supernatural gifts received by them antecedently to their ordination but from their ordination it self must expect that their proceedings be not only disorderly but invalid if they presume to exercise any Divine Authority not received by Ordination § VIII HENCE therefore I infer 4. That God did leave them to those ordinary means of judging concerning the right of their Governours which had been usual among them in judging concerning their secular Governours These were best suited to vulgar understanding that they might the same way judg of the title of their Spiritual Governours by which even they had been used and often been obliged to judg of the title of their secular Governours and the better such means are suited to popular understandings by so much they must prove more serviceable to the great end of Government They must have been more easily applicable to this particular design of Government than any new means that could have been introduced for this purpose and it is always to be presumed that all prudent Governours would rather make use of present means than any other if they may withal serve their ends as well In such a Case the very avoiding innovation is a very considerable advantage of such a means above any other Besides it was to be presumed that these were the means intended if no express provision was made for any other For we are to consider the present customs and Notions of that Age as the matter of their Revelations to be reformed where they were amiss and to be assured where they were uncertain especially where the Subject was of consequence And therefore where something was necessary to be practised and no new order was taken for the introduction of any thing new there it was most natural to presume that Christ did not think fit to make any alteration and therefore that he was pleased with what was already received § IX CERTAINLY we have reason to believe that this was most likely to be the reasoning of that Age and therefore if it had been a mistake he would in all likelihood have prevented it especially in the first beginnings of Christianity not only in regard of the moment of the thing so far as that Age it self was concerned in it but also in regard of the ill influence a mistake in that Age must have on all succeeding Ages and the great difficulty of ever reforming any such mistake afterwards when the mistake should have the advantage of a present possession and the averseness which is natural to men against changing any thing that had such possession when also such a possession received from such Persons who had best reason to know what was fit to be received would pass for a Presumption against the right of innovating any thing and when withal the credentials of Persons who would afterwards be desirous to reform them should decay as this Prescription and Presumption would grow stronger and prevail more on the minds of men This therefore being supposed that the Scriptures silence concerning any new provision is a strong presumption that the sacred Writers and the Apostles whose History they wrote never intended any this I say will let our Brethren see how insufficient their reasoning is from this silence of the Scripture concerning any certain Rule prescribed for Succession to conclude against any confinement of this Power to those certain Persons through whose hands this Succession is to be continued when by this means of management it is proved to be an Argument of the contrary And they must needs apprehend it as a great distress to their Cause to be obliged to produce any direct or positive Arguments either to disprove this confinement of the Power to Persons in Authority for the time being for maintaining Succession or to prove that they who pretend to an Authority which they have not received from their Superiors can justifie their claim by any other solid Principles Yet to this distress they must needs be reduced by this Observation § X 5. THEREFORE If this be the Case indeed that God intended that the Spiritual Power should be the same way derived to Posterity as the Temporal Power is then the matter will be plain that none may pretend to this Spiritual Power but they who have received it from those men to whom it was first committed For in deriving Temporal Power this method is still observed punctually not only that they who are Authorized by them who first received the Authority are validly Authorized but that none else are so And this Negative that none may pretend to Power but they who have received it from those men who had at first a Power to give it has by all wise Legislators been thought as necessary to oblige inferior Governours to a dependence on their Superiors as this dependence has been also thought necessary for the practicableness of all visible Government Besides where-ever Princes are obliged in extraordinary Cases to give extraordinary commands and Authority to some particular Persons without the formalities of
of a popular party § II THIS is not allowed in any Societies of the like nature Though the Aldermen of Corporations have a power together with the Mayors to dispose of the Offices belonging to their respective Corporations yet if the whole Table shall meet by themselves in separation from the Mayor and in opposition to him however they might over-vote him if he had been present and their assembly lawful yet what they should do in the Case we are now supposing would be a perfect Nullity and unobliging to the Corporation But if any single Alderman should separate from all his Brethren also and should of himself undertake to dispose of the things or Offices of the Corporation could any of our Brethren themselves approve them in it Could they think the Offices so disposed of by them validly disposed of Could they think the Corporation obliged to ratifie them And yet it is strange that they should not see how like this Case is to that of their own Predecessors The first Ministers they had ordeined in the separation were ordeined by such Presbyters as these and by such an act as this now mentioned And their whole Succession since that time has been mainteined generally on no better a Title This representation of their case may possibly affect some popular capacities better than the naked reasons But that the more judicious among them may see that my desire it to deal fairly and candidly with them and not to represent their cause more invidiously than it deserves or to take any advantage that may be taken from a false representation of it I shall endeavour to reduce the reason to a more close way of management under the following considerations which I shall intreat our Adversaries to consider impartially § III 1. THAT though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is the correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination By his being a Presbyter in the Catholick Church when he is once made I do not mean that he may canonically exercise his Power in all particular Churches where he may have occasion to come without dependence on the respective Governours but that the exercise of his power in his own Church is to be ratified over the whole Catholick Church in general that they are to suppose the Sacraments administred by him to be validly administred and that therefore they are not to rebaptize Persons baptized by him when they come to live among them nor to refuse their Communion to such to whom he thinks fit to give it nor to receive to their Communion those who are excluded from his and that they are also so far to ratifie the Authority received in his own Church from those who had power to give it him as that if they think fit to permit him to exercise his power within their Jurisdiction they do it without pretending to give him a new Authority but only a new Licence and that where-ever he can exercise his Authority without Canonical injury as in Heathenish or Heretical Countries where no Canons do oblige ratifie all his acts of power the same way as if he had performed them within his own Canonical Jurisdiction This is more than is observed in civil Societies One Country is not bound to confirm the censures of another they are neither obliged to banish their exiles nor to receive their Countrimen to the same priviledges among themselves which they enjoyed in their own Country nor to receive their Magistrates to exercise power among themselves without a new Commission which may give them a new power which the Authority of their own Country was not able to give them § IV AND the reason why I level my discourse against the power that the Presbyters of our Adversaries may pretend to on account of their being Presbyters of the Catholick Church is because this is the only pretence that they can plausibly make for the validity of what they do Canonical Licence they cannot so much as pretend to for exercising their power within the Jurisdictions of others without their leave And it has already appeared that they can make out no Succession from the Apostles but what must originally have come from Episcopal Ordination That therefore they should expect that the exercise of a power received from the Bishops yet exercised within their Jurisdiction without the Licence of the Bishops nay contrary to their express prohibition should be counted valid how unlawful soever must be from the irrevocableness of the Authority at first received by them and the unconfinedness of the design of that power antecedently to those Canons by which it was afterwards made irregular in its practice Were it not for the nature of the unconfinedness of this power they could not pretend to any right to exercise it out of the Jurisdiction of him who gave it them nor even within that Jurisdiction without his leave And therefore if this will not do it they can have nothing that can defend their Vsurpations from being invalid as well as uncanonical § V AND that this correspondence of the Catholick Church with that particular one in which he was ordeined is the true reason why all other Churches are obliged to ratifie the acts of every particular Presbyter will appear if it be considered that by his Ordination in his own particular Church he can have no Jurisdiction given him over any other which is not under the Jurisdiction of that particular Church from which he has received his Orders And therefore the reason why they are obliged to confirm his censures cannot be any Authoritative deference they owe to him such as Subjects owe to even their fallible Superiors even in matters wherein they think them actually mistaken yet so to practise as if they thought them not mistaken but purely their own actual conviction concerning the reasonableness of the thing it self because they either know or presume it to be fit that his censure should be confirmed But this reason of the thing would not hold were it not that his Church and theirs are in those things the same and as they give the same advantages so they require the same qualifications which whoever is presumed to have in one cannot by them by whom he is presumed to have them be at the same time presumed to want them in the other In other Societies where the priviledges conferred are proper to the Society the qualifications are so too And therefore though one Society be really satisfied that a Subject has deserved well of another and that he has deservedly received his reward for his eminent deserts from that Authority which had power to give him it and therefore that he has a just title to a reward yet are they not obliged in any reason to give him the same honour in their own For the nature of these Societies are so little
interessed in common as that the very same performance which is eminently serviceable to one may for that very cause be as eminently disserviceable to the other as when they are in a state of hostility However it is certain that as their interests are very different so the means of serving those interests are very different also and therefore that there is no real consequence that he who has indeed obliged one Society must in doing so oblige all others also § VI BUT the benefits of the Sacraments are such as that he who has them in one Church cannot by him who supposes him to have them there be at the same time supposed to want them in another Regeneration and pardon of sins and a Mystical Vnion with Christ are the designed effects of the Sacraments And it is impossible that he who has these in any one Church can be presumed to want them in another by them who presume he already has them And as no Church can think it in her power to exclude from her Communion those very Persons whom she judges regenerated and pardoned and united to Christ so if she be convinced that these benefits are validly conferred by a Presbyter in another Church she must in reason be obliged to treat them as such in her own Now whether they be validly conferred or not that she is to try by his Ministry If his Ministry be a valid Ministry his Sacraments must be valid Sacraments and actually confer the benefits designed by them to Persons not unqualified to receive them And whether his Ministry be valid or no that is whether he be indeed a Legal Representative of God so as to oblige him to ratifie what is done by himself in his name this being an act of Authority and of Authority visibly administred by men however proceeding originally from God it must be judged the same way as is usually made use of in judging concerning acts of Humane Authority that is by considering the power by which he has received it And because by communicating with the Church of which such a Presbyter is a Member and from whence himself pretends to have received his Authority she plainly acknowledges that that Church has really a power to give him that Authority he pretends to therefore the only way to satisfie her self in this matter is to examine the truth of his pretences whether he has indeed received that Authority he pretends to from those Persons from whom he pretends to have received it Which way of tryal does plainly resolve her judgment in this matter into her correspondency with his Church By that she judges whether his Authority be good and whether he have actually received it § VII 2. THEREFORE Hence it follows that he who cannot validly make out his Authority in the particular Church in which he pretends to have received his Orders cannot in reason expect that the exercise of his Authority should be ratified in other Churches who cannot thus be satisfied that he has received them For their duty of correspondence being primarily with Churches and only secondarily with particular Persons as they relate to particular Churches which is particularly true in acts of Authority which cannot be supposed in any particular Person but by derivation from some Church or which is to the same purpose from some Ecclesiastical Person whose act is to be taken for the act of the Church it must follow that the tryal of the pretences of any particular Person to Authority must be by examining his reception of it from the Church And therefore if it cannot appear that he has received any such Authority as he pretends to from that Church wherein he pretends to have received it he is to be presumed not to have it at all and therefore all that he presumes to do on supposition of it must be null and invalid § VIII 3. THE Church by which the validity of the Orders of every particular Presbyter must expect to be tryed must not be a Church that derives its beginning from him but such a one as must be supposed settled and established before he could be capable of any pretensions to Orders For no other Church can be supposed proper to try him by because the Authority of no other Church can be presumed good antecedently to his being so All the Authority nay the very being of a Church set up by a particular Presbyter must it self depend on the Authority of the Person by whom it is set up If he be no Presbyter such a Congregation cannot be a Church in the sence we mean the word at present and therefore cannot be capable of any Ecclesiastical Authority Whence it will follow that he cannot by any act of such a Church derive Authority if he wanted it before because they can have no Authority but what he brought over to them If he brought none they have none to give him If they had any yet not such as were proper for this purpose both because it is hardly possible that it can be more notorious than that which was at least in time antecedent to it and because at least it cannot be such a Church as other Churches have held correspondence with antecedently to their correspondence with his particular Person and therefore whose Authority might have been presumed to have been granted by them on account of their correspondence with them And there will appear the less reason either that this way of tryal should be right or should be admitted by them because it is against the interests of all Government whatsoever and will justifie the practices of any seditious Person who can be so successful in his seditious practices as to gain himself the reputation of being the Head of a seditious party To be sure the party headed by him will give him all the Authority they are capable of giving him It is their interest to do so at least in the beginnings of disturbances and as it will oblige him to their interests so it will give him greater advantages for promoting those interests effectually And then what Government can think it self secure if it were so easie to justifie seditious practices How can we think that Governments should ever be favourable to Principles so pernicious to the rights of Government in general § IX NOR are these things only true concerning Churches erected by single Presbyters but concerning such also as had whole Presbyteries made up of multitudes of single Presbyters who had been over-voted in their several Presbyteries respectively Especially if they presumed to exercise their Government in the Jurisdiction of another This would also be a precedent as favourable to sedition and as destructive to Government as the other If fugitive over-voted Magistrates of several places may invade the Territories of a Third and there erect themselves into an absolute Senate independent on the Government of the place what security could there be for any Government For can we think that those same Persons who
had behaved themselves seditiously in their single capacities would not do so also when they were united and when their common interest still obliged them to do so when they might thereby so much better their disadvantages in their respective Presbyteries It is the humour of such Persons to unite against a common Adversary at least for a time how seditious soever they might be otherwise And certainly they might expect better condescensions from Persons as criminal as themselves who had themselves also many unreasonable things to be born with than from their more innocent equals who had Justice on their side much more than from their Superiors And what could any Ecclesiastical censures signifie if they who had been ejected singly might be thus allowed to confederate themselves into a Communion and a Presbytery independent on those from which they had been ejected Who would value Excommunication or Deprivation when they might so easily restore themselves into a condition as good as that from which they had been ejected and might at the same time so easily revenge themselves on those by whom they had been ejected by setting up another Government within their Jurisdiction whose acts must also be accounted as valid as their own These things shew that such a precedent of Presbyteries erected out of Persons over-voted in their particular Presbyteries would be injurious to the common interest of Government in general though the form were every where Presbyterian as well as to those particular Governours by whom they had been ejected and to those in whose Jurisdiction they were assembled And its being against the common interest of Government is as has been observed a great presumption that it is against Justice also § X BUT besides this presumption the same reasons of exception lye against the Justice of such a Presbytery as against the acts of single Presbyters I mention not the Canons that forbid all Churches to receive the Excommunicates of each other that put Communicants with them into the same condition with the Excommunicates themselves that deprive them all of the Communion of all those Churches who maintein a correspondence with each other in the observation of those Canons I mention not that common interest which at first induced the Governours of particular Churches to agree upon those Canons and obliges all even those that never received nor heard of those Canons yet to be determined by them in their practice on the same account as all even the most barbarous Nations are obliged by the Law of Nations though never explicitely received by them because these are as necessary for the common interest and correspondence of Ecclesiastical as the other are for those of Civil Societies Which consideration must extend the ratification of the censures of particular Churches to the Catholick Church as the Law of Nations is common to all Nations so that the Excommunicates of every particular Church must be so to the Catholick Church also And then sure it will be hard to understand how they who are de Jure out of the communion of all Churches can yet be in the Catholick Church or how they who have no right to be members of any Church can by their meeting together become a Church and become capable of Ecclesiastical Authority Which reason will in the consequence of it reach Schismaticks as well as Hereticks how little soever it be observed by our Brethren who are very little used to take in the rational rights of Government in general in their disputes concerning the Government of the Church § XI BUT besides the same reasons invalidate the acts of these Presbyteries which were urged against the acts of single Presbyters among them Whatever may be thought of such a Multitude of over-voted Presbyters in a Heathen Country where the right were primi occupantis yet where a Government is already possessed their encroaching on that must be as invalid as if they should take upon them to dispose of the goods of such Persons as were in actual possession whatever might be thought of what conveyances they might also make of goods that were under no propriety And the reason of these two cases is so exactly the same as the conveyances of power must in such a case be as invalid as the conveyance of property Besides according to the nature of Government which admits of no competition within its own Jurisdiction strangers how numerous soever immediately become Subjects by living in the Jurisdiction of another whatever they be in their own and that with this disadvantage also beyond the natural Subjects of the place that they can have no interest in so much of the Government as the Natives of the place may pretend to where the Government is Democratical And the acts of such Subjects how numerous soever must be invalid in matters of Government Now in this I believe our Adversaries will find themselves deeply concerned They who pretend to the most regular Ordination of them since the defection who were not immediately ordeined by Bishops can only say that the Presbyters by whom they were ordeined had received Episcopal Ordination and that they were ordeined by a full Presbytery of such Presbyters not of the greater part of the settled Presbytery of the place where they were ordeined or of any other but only of a Multitude of particular Presbyters from several parts who were over-voted in their several respective Presbyteries I believe they cannot give an instance in any place where the greater part of a settled Presbytery revolted from the Bishops to them I am sure they cannot justifie their ordinary successions by such Ordinations § XII AND 4. As the order of Presbytery which would be allowed in the Catholick Church must first appear to have been validly received in some particular Church and that particular Church must on the Principles now mentioned be some Episcopal Church as Presbyterian so no Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in such a Church without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries Let none be surprized at my speaking of an Episcopal Church as Presbyterian I do it only that I may in dealing with our Adversaries accommodate my self to their Notions It is therefore certain that in the Ordination of Presbyters after the Episcopal way the Bishop does not lay on his own hands alone but has the assistance of several other Presbyters who are present to lay on their hands together with him On this account it is that several of our Adversaries who are sensible of their obligation in interest to do it do justifie the validity of those Orders they have received by Episcopal Ordination They consider the whole act only as the act of an Episcopal Presbytery and consider the Bishop himself in that act only as an ordinary Presbyter who cannot lose the power he has as a common Presbyter by being made a President of the whole Presbytery Yet in that act they consider him only as an ordinary Presbyter because they think it would
by the unanimous consent as I said of interessed as well as disinteressed agreeing in it And § XII 2. IT is as notorious that our present Bishops have succeeded the Bishops of those times in a Canonical way both that they have their power given them in a Succession from them who were then invested with it I mean at least so far Canonically as is requisite for the validity of their call and that they have had as much power given them as was requisite to keep up the Succession valid to this day For none can doubt but that an Episcopal power according as it was understood and designed in those Ages did include a power not only of ordeining other ordinary Ministers but of validly consecrating other Bishops too And none can doubt but that these two powers are abundantly sufficient for securing succession and that all our Ministers have their present Orders from them who upon these terms must be supposed sufficiently empowered to confer them on them The Successions are so few since the Reformation as that every particular Minister may easily reckon up the particulars for his own vindication I presume this also notorious because I suppose the ordinary prudence even of honest Rusticks would not think the contrary suggestions concerning the Nags-head Ordination raised only by a few concerned Persons in a corner and not divulged till many years after the thing was done to be credible in opposition to the still extant Records of the Nation to the contrary § XIII AND by the same way whereby such illiterate Persons may satisfie themselves of the validity of the Ordination of our Ministers they will also find reason to question that of the Non-Conformists They need trace them up no higher than the first deviation from Episcopacy And supposing that they must thence derive all the power they can now pretend to have it will be as easie to discover the Nullities of their present proceedings as it is to discover the like Nullities in their worldly affairs in which they are often concerned to trust their own judgments They might find the Nullity even of those who were at first lawfully ordeined by them who had power to Ordein them in their actings against all the visible Superior powers by which they were ordeined on the same account on which in their worldly concerns they would think the actings of a particular lawfully-empowered Constable invalid if he opposed himself to all the visible supreme Magistracy of the Land in which he had been made a Constable Much more must they find the Nullity of the Successions continued from such Persons In their secular affairs they judg a title null if either the power given were not sufficient for mainteining a Succession or if a sufficient power were given but by Persons who had no power to dispose of it And they may find themselves to judg thus not because of any concernment of it as secular but in regard of the pure intrinsick Justice of the Contract and the nature of the thing which must therefore equally concern the like Contracts and conveyances And upon the Principles here proposed they need only apply these Concessions For I have endeavoured to shew that the power of ordeining others was not given them by the Episcopal Presbyteries from whom the first of them received their Orders at least that it was not given them separately from those Presbyteries That though they had that power given them yet the Orders since conferred by them must be Null even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government even as Aristocratical because they have neither been conferred in lawful Assemblies nor by plurality of votes So that still in all this there is nothing but what may appear even to such illiterate Persons even by those common rules of Justice by which they guide themselves in their secular Transactions § XIV BUT besides this of distinguishing their true Governours from false pretenders They will 2. Be better enabled by these Principles to know the extent of their Duty even to their true Governours themselves They need not here follow our Brethrens method of engaging into disputes concerning the expediency or inexpediency of every constitution seeing this will not excuse them from their duty though they should prove really inexpedient Because for that not they but their Superiors must be responsible if they be obedient but they themselves may be responsible if they should withdraw their obedience unwarrantably Nor need they trouble their Heads with those many scruples of our Brethren which make their duty unpracticable and therefore must be groundless or even with those which after all considerations may still remain practicable yet not without much tediousness and scrupulosity even to well-meaning Persons themselves which certainly could never have been designed by God § XV BUT upon our Principles their duty will be plain and easie What may appear to be their duty upon reading of the Scripture with an honest and unprejudiced heart and that moral diligence and assistance of skilful Persons in matters wherein they would find their own unskilfulness which their own prudence would suggest in matters of the like concernment expressed in an antient Book and in an exotick tongue and style what I say might upon these terms appear to be their duty clearly for it is not likely that God would oblige such to any duty which upon these terms might not be clear to them that they must practise whatsoever any Authority on earth should decree to the contrary As for other things how inconvenient soever they cannot in prudence be thought sufficient to encourage them to a resistance because there can be no greater inconvenience than to be excluded from the ordinary means of Salvation excepting sin And therefore in all impositions whatsoever how oppressive soever and therefore how sinful soever they may prove to the Governours who impose them yet if they be not also sinful to the Subjects the Subjects cannot be excused from yielding to their Governours as much the lesser inconvenience So that by these Principles such idiots as I am speaking of are disobliged from any further enquiries into the merit of their Superiors Impositions but only whether they be sinful And the instances must needs be rare which could on this account oblige them to stand out against their Ecclesiastical Superiors § XVI ESPECIALLY considering the several degrees such a deliberation must proceed through before it can come to this height In the first place the illiterate Person I am speaking of may by his own prudence find how unsafe it would be for him to rely on his own Judgment but only in such cases wherein upon full information in the evidence by such as were skilful he might find himself capable of apprehending and judging For others which even on these supposals he could not find himself fit to judg of that is wherein he could not apprehend what were told him and what withal he should judg necessary to be throughly apprehended