their measure use it by the vertue of his authority who said whose sins ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose sins ye retain they are retained Whereupon we may collect that as the power of the keyes is originally in Christ the Churches universal head and was by him given to the heads of Churches onely so it can be in the whole Church or in its subordinate members no otherwise then as received from their head according to that of Saint Paul When ye are met together and my Spirit c. And therefore to make it farther evident that the heads of Churches are to be understood in the direction of tell it to the Church we are to denote that the power of the keyes in the next verse was directed to the Apostles in the word ye when it was said Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven for unto them was most of this chapter directed the which was the reason of Saint Peters interogating him presently hereupon How oft shall my brother offend c. This power comonly called the power of the keyes and by the Romanists appropriate to the chief of that Sea only is that divine obsignation of Christian authority and precept whereby those laws and edicts of him that sitteth in the seat of judgment as the head of each Church that were but civilly or morally criminal in their own nature and obnoxious to temporal wrath onely for their breach come now to be sinful and damnable as being violations against God and the heavenly thrown it self by whom they are impowred and whose authority they do represent according to that sentence to be given at the last day inasmuch as ye have or have not done it c. Upon which grounds we may know what to conceive of that article of our Creed I believe the holy Catholike Church which some would wrest and make use of to draw mens obedience which way they pleased by proposing unto us what they pleased for Catholike doctrine But we are to conceive that this primitive form of profession of Christian faith therefore called the Apostles Creed was offered to and taken by such as were to be admitted into the Christian Church to shew and state their beliefe before their admittance and not to direct their obedience afterwards For although to believe in God in Christ in the holy Ghost do together with the acknowledgement of their deity draw on obedience by just consequence yet was this form of profession of faith therefore called the Creed made but to denote their beliefe of their true existence by which means being received into the Church their obedience was thence to be learnt For strange it had been for the Church to have proposed to men the matter of obedience to any of whom as yet they had no beliefe in And therefore when I profess to believe the holy Catholike Church the word holy will make it unconceiveable how it should directly import my profession of obedience and that not onely because the Catholike Church or Christs universal body cannot as before noted be ever comprehended under one notion and conception so as to be definitive to me concerning their determinations but also because I can never rightly say of the present or past militant Church to whom I seek for direction that they are all holy nor can men that live in a particular Church be ordinarily able to know what is and what is not Catholike doctrine besides that which is proposeth Whereupon understanding our belief in or of the holy Catholike Church to import our beliefe that Christ hath a true sanctified body which being so made by means of the holy Ghost in the article foregoing comes through their union in Christ and his Spirit to be of one communion from the rest of the world and so to be the Communion of Saints as in the article following So that then although the Creed as a Creed cannot of it self oblige to obedience yet since the beliefe of the articles thereof do by consequent bring men to Christs Church and out of desire to attain that Communion of Saints doth also farther prompt me to acts of obedience to that Church to whom I made this profession it will therefore follow that that obedience which I cannot give to the Catholick Church as such must be to this end given to that part of it under which I live since that I cannot otherwise obey the Catholike then by obeying the particular All which will be cleared by one instance of Saint Pauls who as the present head of that Church gives liberty to the Corinthians in eating of things offered to Idols notwithstanding that the then Catholike representative Church at Jerusalem and he himself amongst them had decreed otherwise Clearly evincing that the power of binding and loosing was to reside in each Churches own head and that they were to perform their obedience to the same party by whom they had learned their Creed who had been their spiritual father and begotten them in Christ. And that this power of the keyes was not given to the Apostles onely as a collective body of Church heads and so to the Catholike Church onely but was also conferred upon the particular heads of the Churches appears in that it was upon occasion particularly given to Saint Peter so that whatsoever head or chief governour should like him acknowledge Christ to be the true spiritual foundation and rock he should from Christ have power also to be herein a rock to others and to bind and loose And both places must contradistinguish the persons binding from those that shall be so bound and the persons telling and complaining to the Church from those that are to hear and have power of redress And as they were in one place spoken to Saint Peter alone to declare against consistorial parity so were they elsewhere given joyntly to all the Apostles the then visible heads of Churches to abate Popish usurpation For they were not to be commanding one another out of their Churches as they might those within them which was forbidden them in the persons of Zebedees Children But in those equalities they were in love to serve one another and in this their parity obeying the precept of submit your selves one to another he that should do it most and thereupon become a Minister and Servant to his fellows will even thereby make himselfe chief among them By which means being converted and become as little Children they shall then be greatest in the kingdome of heaven or have great and kingly power in the Church from the power of Christ that hath taken them into the arms of his acknowledgement From whence it will again follow that Who so shall receive one such little Child in my name receiveth me that is in hearing and obeying him he shal hear and obey me but Who so
trust of sons or servants so within the verge of his own knowledge and account that he need not grant so high proprieties as the Prince must whereby to cause grumbling when any part shall be recalled But however their disagreement is but accidental and that either in regard of number or in regard of subjection For the first respect as aforesaid may make them differ in their manner of exercise and managery of power and in the latter they must differ in the measure because Families are usually included under other Governments and so the Master is tyed by the Laws of the same from exercising Arbitrary power Yet they agree in institution both of them having absolute power of Government from God For the Prince by his Laws cannot be said to give the power of Master but rather to remit it as he thinks good because the whole Family and each one in it must be looked on as subjects to him as well as the Master And indeed Families as now they stand under other Governments streightned in power may be called politick Governments for the education of children chiefly And therefore why other Creatures have it not is because they are not onely less considerable but also for that their young are so soon able to shift for themselves which women could not throughly do between childe and childe if this divine political institution of marriage had not been to engage the man also And yet though marriage or having the propriety of wives and also their subjection be from Divine positive law yet I finde not but the quantity of that subjection and number of wives is at the dispose of the higher power and where none is at the husbands But let us go on to examine the particulars of a Family how they stand in nature First the foundation of the Family is in the wife Now all say marriage is not natural but that propriety of wives was one of the first positive precepts when yet there was but one man and one woman and they could not have choice Now in nature children are the mothers as amongst all other Creatures the young belong to the female and to the male onely as having propriety in the female If it be said man hath power natural over the woman as the male of other things hath over the female this is indeed natural for the stronger to rule the weaker and not proper to the sex for such females as are stronger then males as in some Creatures it chanceth rule them too and for ought this imports a strong wife may govern a weak husband as the Nation of Amazons do practice But what is this to the ruling of women in general or to having of particular wives Now suppose the power of the father derive it self from having it over the wife and so naturally governing as in her right then the question will be How long and till what age this power shall last And what Creatures example they will follow therein If they say it is at the parents dispose this is still indeed the arbitrary government of the stronger over the weaker and unless they claim the just authority of Gods precepts nature gives them little other right I but you will say the childe is bound to the father in so high an obligation of gratitude as he can never requite But not bound to him I hope till he know him Well but suppose he is first to take his mothers word for that then we are to suppose again that as his mother hath during his infancy natural power over him so hath she with her self resigned this power to her husband In this case we must consider that gratitude is a free and intended return for a benefit which in the receivers apprehension was freely intended For if the giver were not free from constraint elsewhere in what he did or else did it according to paction with the relative party in the first case it obligeth not and in the second but as other pactions do But if it be free without indenting for return such as we call a gratuity then is the obliged as free in measuring and proportioning the return as the obliger was in bestowing the benefits and the Agents in both kinds must be reciprocally Judges For although a courtesie as in reference to the good of Society may imply a secret paction for return yet it differs much from a true paction First in that pactions have their returns exprest and next that a third superior party is called to see performance but in gratituties as the Donor could be alone judge of the benefit intended so the grateful of the measure of benefit received and consequently what return is most proportionable both to his present power and that receit also And if you put it in the obligers power to demand return according as he shall say his intentions were you will at last leave no steady place or measure for return or obligation at all Children while little can neither apprehend benefit nor make return unless you will say that the sport of the childe is return as acceptance from the loved is requital to the loving for men are not alwayes traders in what they do but the pleasure of doing is many times the cause of doing If this be the case as having parents provoked by the affection of propriety and pleasure of doing they lay no obligation beyond self respect at least until the childe be of such yeers as to be able to discover and value truely the benefit received his return cannot be expected which can then onely be what he thinks good except Gods positive precepts strengthen his gratitude beyond nature But since this obligation of the childes is first placed for his generation and then for his education we will a little enquire into both and will begin with that of generation In this man must be considered like other males as prompted by natural appetite with no farther direct intention of laying an obligation on providence for continuance of his kinde then when the like appetite causing him to eat or sleep he thinks expresly on preservation of his individual And if the behaviour of the males be well marked after this meeting they will seldom be found in any glorying or exulting humor as confident of good done but rather shame and reluctance And again what shall we think of those that through poverty or other considerations might be unwilling to have been the parents of children at all So for the woman or female again although she besides her share in generation haâ—h paâ—t of her own substance imployed in nourishment of the young whilst it is within her and passeth her time in bearing not in pleasure but mostly in affliction yet since nothing of it is voluntary it remembers me of an undutiful but pertinent answer of one that was reproved as unnatural for slighting his mother which was That she got him for her pleasure and brought him forth for her ease But
consent be neâ—â—ssary And therefore those that would wrest those words of humane Creature to import that all kindes of Regiment and power which men exercise one over another is but of humane Authority and institution would make the Apostle contrary to himself for it is plain that he writing to the converted Jews amongst other admonitions to good behavior to observe this of submission to Authority could not be imagined to have made that an Argument thereunto which should have been quite destructive thereof For if the Argument had run thus You are to submit your selves to all such forms of Government as you shall be under inasmuch as they being all but things of humane device and having no power but what they as a new sort of humane Creatures had received from those many deities their own Subjects it is therefore Reason that you should submit your selves unto them for the Lords sake even because your selves as setters of them up have power above them No certainly it is best to interpret humane Creature or Man in the general to imply and be put by way of excellence for man in particular that is for that supreme and eminent person in each Country who as the representer of all men therein had Authority to command every humane creature in his jurisdiction For we are to submit our selves to every Ordinance of man thus vertually and collectively considered and not to every Ordinance of every man else that should take upon him to command us Because this were to confound the persons submitting with those to be submitted unto and to make the injunction useless if to be fulfilled by what we as men did enjoyn to our selves or impossible if bound to submit to every man besides Whereupon we may conceive that by way of pre-occupation those words of humane Creature or humane Ordinance are put in with that latitude by St. Peter Namely the better to fasten their subjection who having had amongst themselves the office and race of their Kings so expresly designed from God himself might else have bogled at the submission to kingship elsewhere as thinking them but of humane device and power And therefore we may interpret him admonishing them who were now to have their conversation honest amongst the Gentiles to be subject to these higher powers although no such express divine designation did so appear but that their offices powers might seem but of humane Creation For they were to know that those powers were of God and that therefore they were to submit themselves for the Lords sake that was the Author of every just derived power Which words for the Lords sake as they may serve to explain the power to be of God however humane device or custom be intervenient so will they serve to restrain the generality of the object of our submission formerly set down by conferring it onely on such as can claim it for the Lords sake namely to Kings as supreme or to governors as sent of him of which more hereafter So that then our submission one to another shall be made good by giving it to our Elders or to such as from the Lord have power to require it even as also the way to honor all men which would have seemed a strange as well as difficult precept is in the same verse explained by Honor the King For by honoring him above other humane Creatures and by honoring others as he appoints I can onely rightly honor all men and give every one their due For as by fearing God above all I give fear to whom fear so by honoring the King I give honor to whom honor So that lastly by this restriction of all humane Ordinance and Authority unto Kings as supreme we may note St. Peter to be explanatory of his brother Paul who in his Epistles as he had many things hard to be understood and which the unlearned and unstable did wrest to their own destruction so this wresting and the damnation or destruction thereupon following was nowhere to be so much feared as by interpreting that those higher Powers he appoints us to be subject unto are but such as are indeed the lowest powers being but such as are ordained of our selves and not such as are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rightfully derived powers from the true I am or original Being himself and so given by him to one Deacon or Minister here below viz. to the King to whom therefore we are to be subject for the Lords sake that is in acknowledgement of Gods power abiding in him so far as to authorize him in this his Office And therefore it will now appear a most unreasonable supposition that any should give what they never had for from whom had the people this power Why should we confound or substract their relation as subjects and instead of a capacity to be governed think they had power of governing Or if they had who was then the governed For take away one relation the other will also fall Or will you suppose in them a vain power that should never be brought into act in them as in the hands it was first put Why should we think God so unnecessary in his dispensations Is it not more agreeable with reason and truth to put this power directly into the hands of the persons that should manage it then by such long deviations first to give it to the people that the people may give it to the Prince that the Prince may again give and make use of it unto and upon the people and all to no other end but by this reciprocal dependency to be at last both of them independent on the true Author of all power which is God himself But this opinion of the Prince his dependent power on the Peoples grows usually from the observation men make of the different powers which Princes have over their Subjects in comparison of one another as thereupon concluding that if this power belong to the Office and to Kings as Kings and that from God who is no respecter of persons but gives to every man and so to Kings what is due and necessary for their callings how comes one King to be less absolute then another Is it not say they from the different stipulations with their people at their Coronations and Elections when by them they are tyed to the observation of such Laws and Customs as do more or less streighten them By which means changing the former Argument about derivation of Kingly power it self into the manner or measure of its execution they think to obtain their conclusion But the Question is not whether the proprietors of any thing by the Law of God or Nature not being particulary restrained may suspend or dispose of part of their rights or not but it is whether Princes be hereof proprietors or not And they that think Princes are impowered from their subjects have their mistake hereof because from these obtrusions or Pactions