nothing fooner will open his eyes to a wife and true valuation of himfelf, (which is fo requifite and high a point of christianity,) and will ftir him up to walk worthy the honourable and grave employment wherewith God and the church hath dignified him; not fearing left he should meet with fome outward holy thing in religion, which his lay-touch or prefence might profane; but left fomething unholy from within his own heart should difhonour and profane in himself that prieftly unction and clergy-right whereto Chrift hath entitled him. Then would the congregation of the Lord foon recover the true likeness and visage of what the is indeed, a holy generation, a royal priesthood, a faintly communion, the household and city of God. And this I hold to be another confiderable reason why the functions of church-government ought to be free and open to any chriftian man, though never fo laic, if his capacity, his faith, and prudent demeanour, commend him. And this the apoftles warrant us to do. But the prelates object, that this will bring prophaneness into the church: to whom may be replied, that none have brought that in more than their own irreligious courses, nor more driven holiness out of living into lifeless things. For whereas God, who hath cleansed every beaft and creeping worm, would not fuffer St. Peter to call them common or unclean, the prelate bishops, in their printed orders hung up in churches, have proclaimed the beft of creatures, mankind, fo unpurified and contagious, that for him to lay his hat or his garment upon the chancel-table, they have defined it no less heinous, in exprefs words, than to prophane the table of the Lord. And thus have they by their canaanitish doctrine, (for that which was to the Jew but jewish, is to the Chriftian no better than canaanitish,) thus have they made common and unclean, thus have they made prophane that nature, which God hath not only cleanfed, but Chrift alfo hath affumed. And now that the equity and just reafon is fo perfpicuous, why in ecclefiaftic cenfure the affiftance fhould be added of fuch as whom not the vile odour of gain and fees, (forbid it God, and blow it with a whirlwind out of our land!) but charity, neighbourhood, and duty to church-government hath called together, where could a wife man wish a mòre equa equal, gratuitous, and meek examination of any offence, that he might happen to commit against christianity, than here? Would he prefer thofe proud fimoniacal courts? Thus therefore the minifter affifted attends his heavenly and spiritual cure: where we fhall fee him both in the course of his proceeding, and firft in the excellency of his end, from the magiftrate far different, and not more different than excelling. His end is to recover all that is of man, both foul and body to an everlasting health: and yet as for worldly happiness, which is the proper fphere wherein the magiftrate cannot but confine his motion without a hideous exorbitancy from law, fo little aims the minifter, as his intended fcope, to procure the much profperity of this life, that ofttimes he may have caufe to wifh much of it away, as a diet puffing up the foul with a flimy flefhinefs, and weakening her principal organic parts. Two heads of evil he has to cope with, ignorance and malice. Against the former he provides the daily manna of incorruptible doctrine, not at thofe fet meals only in public, but as oft as he fhall know that each infirmity or conftitution requires. Against the latter with all the branches thereof, not meddling with that reftraining and ftyptic furgery, which the law ufes, not indeed against the malady, but against the eruptions, and outermost effects thereof; he on the contrary, beginning at the prime caufes and roots of the disease, fends in thofe two divine ingredients of moft cleanfing power to the foul, admonition and reproof; befides which two there is no drug or antidote that can reach to purge the mind, and without which all other experiments are but vain, unless by accident. And he that will not let thefe pafs into him, though he be the greatest king, as Plato affirms, must be thought to remain impure within, and unknowing of those things wherein his pureness and his knowledge fhould moft appear. As foon therefore as it may be difcerned that the chriftian patient, by feeding otherwhere on meats not allowable, but of evil juice, hath difordered his diet, and spread an ill humour through his veins, immediately difpofing to a ficknefs; the minifter, as being much nearer both in eye and duty than the magiftrate, speeds him betimes to overtake that diffused malignance with fome gentle potion of admonishment; or if 3 aught aught be obstructed, puts in his opening and difcuffive confections. This not fucceeding after once or twice, or oftener, in the prefence of two or three his faithful brethren appointed thereto, he advifes him to be more careful of his dearest health, and what it is that he fo rafhly hath let down into the divine veffel of his foul, God's temple. If this obtain not, he then, with the counsel of more affiftants, who are informed of what diligence hath been already used, with more speedy remedies lays nearer fiege to the entrenched caufes of his diftemper, not fparing fuch fervent and well aimed reproofs as may best give him to see the dangerous eftate wherein he is. To this alfo his brethren and friends intreat, exhort, adjure; and all these endeavours, as there is hope left, are more or lefs repeated. But if neither the regard of himself, nor the reverence of his elders and friends prevail with him to leave his vicious appetite; then as the time urges, fuch engines of terrour God hath given into the hand of his minifter, as to fearch the tendereft angles of the heart: one while he shakes his ftubbornnefs with racking convulfions nigh despair, otherwhiles with deadly corrofives he gripes the very roots of his faulty liver to bring him to life through the entry of death. Hereto the whole church befeech him, beg of him, deplore him, pray for him. After all this performed with what patience and attendance is poffible, and no relenting on his part, having done the utmost of their cure, in the name of God and of the church they diffolve their fellowship with him, and holding forth the dreadful fponge of excommunion, pronounce him wiped out of the lift of God's inheritance, and in the cuftody of Satan till he repent. Which horrid fentence, though it touch neither life nor limb, nor any worldly poffeffion, yet has it fuch a penetrating force, that fwifter than any chymical fulphur, or that lightning which harms not the fkin, and rifles the entrails, it fcorches the inmoft foul. Yet even this terrible denouncement is left to the church for no other caufe but to be as a rough and vehement cleanfing medicine, where the malady is obdurate, a mortifying to life, a kind of faving by undoing. And it may be truly faid, that as the mercies of wicked men are cruelties, fo the cruelties of the church are mercies. For if repentance fent from Heaven Heaven meet this loft wanderer, and draw him out of that steep journey wherein he was hafting towards deftruction, to come and reconcile to the church, if he bring with him his bill of health, and that he is now clear of infection, and of no danger to the other sheep; then with incredible expreffions of joy all his brethren receive him, and fet before him thofe perfumed banquets of christian confolation; with precious ointments bathing and fomenting the old, and now to be forgotten ftripes, which terrour and fhame had inflicted; and thus with heavenly folaces they cheer up his humble remorse, till he regain his firft health and felicity. This is the approved way, which the gospel prescribes, these are the fpiritual weapons of holy cenfure, and minifterial warfare, not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of ftrong holds, cafting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Chrift.' What could be done more for the healing and reclaiming that divine particle of God's breathing, the foul, and what could be done lefs? he that would hide his faults from fuch a wholesome curing as this, and count it a twofold punishment, as fome do, is like a man, that having foul diseases about him, perifhes for fhame, and the fear he has of a rigorous incifion to come upon his flesh. We shall be able by this time to difcern whether prelatical jurifdiction be contrary to the gofpel or no. First, therefore, the government of the gofpel being economical and paternal, that is, of fuch a family where there be no fervants, but all fons in obedience, not in fervility, as cannot be denied by him that lives but within the found of fcripture; how can the prelates juftify to have turned the fatherly orders of Chrift's household, the bleffed meeknefs of his lowly roof, those ever-open and inviting doors of his dwelling house, which delight to be frequented with only filial acceffes; how can they justify to have turned thefe domeftic privileges into the bar of a proud judicial court, where fees and clamours keep fhop and drive a trade, where bribery and corruption folicits, paltering the free and moneylefs power of difcipline with a carnal fatisfaction by the purse? Contrition, humiliation, confeffion, the very fighs of a repentant repentant spirit, are there fold by the penny. That undeflowered and unblemishable fimplicity of the gospel, not she herself, for that could never be, but a falfewhited, a lawny refemblance of her, like that airborn Helena in the fables, made by the forcery of prelates, inftead of calling her difciples from the receipt of custom, is now turned publican herfelf; and gives up her body to a mercenary whoredom under thofe fornicated arches, which the calls God's house, and in the fight of those her altars, which the hath fet up to be adored, makes merchandise of the bodies and fouls of men. Rejecting Purgatory for no other reason, as it seems, than because her greediness cannot defer, but had rather use the utmost extortion of redeemed penances in this life. But because thefe matters could not be thus carried without a begged and borrowed force from worldly authority, therefore prelaty, flighting the deliberate and chofen council of Chrift in his fpiritual government, whofe glory is in the weakness of fleshly things, to tread upon the creft of the world's pride and violence by the power of fpiritual ordinances, hath on the contrary made these her friends and champions, which are Chrift's enemies in this his high defign, fmothering and extinguishing the fpiritual force of his bodily weakness in the difcipline of his church with the boisterous and carnal tyranny of an undue, unlawful, and ungofpel-like jurifdiction. And thus prelaty, both in her fleshly supportments, in her carnal doctrine of ceremony and tradition, in her violent and fecular power, going quite counter to the prime end of Chrift's coming in the flesh, that is, to reveal his truth, his glory, and his might, in a clean contrary manner than prelaty feeks to do, thwarting and defeating the great myftery of God; I do not conclude that prelaty is antichriftian, for what need I? The things themfelves conclude it. Yet if fuch like practices, and not many worse than these of our prelates, in that great darkness of the Roman church, have not exempted both her and her prefent members from being judged to be antichriftian in all orthodoxal esteem; I cannot think but that it is the abfolute voice of truth and all her children to pronounce this prelaty, and these her dark deeds in the midst of this great light wherein we live, to be more antichriftian than antichrift himself. THE |