whatever humor, faction, policy, or licentious will would prompt them to?

Again, if Christ be the church's husband, expecting her to be presented before him a pure unspotted virgin; in what could he show his tender love to her more, than in prescribing his own ways, which he best knew would be to the improvement of her health and beauty, with much greater care doubtless than the Persian king could appoint for his queen Esther those maiden dietings and set prescriptions of baths and odors, which may render her at last more amiable to his eye? for of any age or sex, most unfitly may a virgin be left to an uncertain and arbitrary education. Yea, though she be well instructed, yet is she still under a more strait tuition, especially if betrothed. In like manner the church, bearing the same resemblance, it were not reason to think she should be left destitute of that care which is as necessary and proper to her as instruction. For public preaching indeed is the gift of the Spirit, working as best seems to his secret will; but discipline is the practic work of preaching directed and applied, as is most requisite, to particular duty; without which it were all one to the benefit of souls, as it would be to the cure of bodies, if all the physicians in London should get into the several pulpits of the city, and assembling all the diseased in every parish, should begin a learned lecture of pleurisies, palsies, lethargies, to which perhaps none there present were inclined; and so without so much as feeling one pulse, or giving the least order to any skilful apothecary, should dismiss them from time to time, some groaning, some languishing, some expiring, with this only charge, to look well to themselves and do as they hear.

Of what excellence and necessity, then, church discipline is, how beyond the faculty of man to frame

and how dangerous to be left to man's invention, who would be every foot turning it to sinister ends; how properly also it is the work of God as father, and of Christ as husband of the church, we have by thus much heard.

CHAPTER II.

That Church Government is set down in Holy Scripture, and that to say otherwise is untrue.

As therefore it is unsound to say, that God hath not appointed any set government in his church, so is it untrue. Of the time of the law there can be no doubt; for, to let pass the first institution of priests and Levites which is too clear to be insisted upon, when the temple came to be built, which in plain judgment could breed no essential change either in religion or in the priestly government, yet God, to show how little he could endure that men should be tampering and contriving in his worship, though in things of less regard, gave to David for Solomon, not only a pattern and model of the temple, but a direction for the courses of the priests and Levites and for all the work of their service.

At the return from the captivity, things were only restored after the ordinance of Moses and David; or if the least alteration be to be found, they had with them inspired men, prophets; and it were not sober to say they did aught of moment without divine inti

mation.

In the prophecy of Ezekiel, from the fortieth chapter onward, after the destruction of the temple, God by his prophet seeking to wean the hearts of the Jews from their old law to expect a new and more perfect

reformation under Christ, sets out before their eyes the stately fabric and constitution of his church with all the ecclesiastical functions appertaining. Indeed the description is assorted best to the apprehension of those times, typical and shadowy, but in such manner as never yet came to pass, nor ever must literally, unless we mean to annihilate the gospel. But so exquisite and lively the description is in portraying the new state of the church, and especially in those points where government seems to be most active, that both Jews and Gentiles might have good cause to be assured, that God, whenever he meant to reform his church, never intended to leave the government thereof, delineated here in such curious architecture, to be patched afterwards and varnished over with the devices and embellishings of man's imagination. Did God take such delight in measuring out the pillars, arches, and doors of a material temple? Was he so punctual and circumspect in lavers, altars, and sacrifices soon after to be abrogated, lest any of these should have been made contrary to his mind? Is not a far more perfect work, more agreeable to his perfection in the most perfect state of the church militant, the new alliance of God to man? Should not he rather now by his own prescribed discipline have cast his line and level upon the soul of man which is his rational temple, and, by the divine square and compass thereof, form and regenerate in us the lovely shapes of virtues and graces, the sooner to edify and accomplish that immortal stature of Christ's body, which is his church, in all her glorious lineaments and proportions? And that this indeed God hath done for us in the gospel, we shall see with open eyes, not under

a veil.

We may pass over the history of the Acts and other places, turning only to those epistles of St Paul to

Timothy and Titus, where the spiritual eye may discern more goodly and gracefully erected than all the magnificence of temple or tabernacle, such a heavenly structure of evangelical discipline, so diffusive of knowledge and charity to the prosperous increase and growth of the church, that it cannot be wondered if that elegant and artful symmetry of the promised new temple in Ezekiel, and all those sumptuous things under the law were made to signify the inward beauty and splendor of the christian church thus governed. And whether this be commanded, let it now be judged.

St Paul after his preface to the first of Timothy, which he concludes in the seventeenth verse with Amen, enters upon the subject of this epistle, which is to establish the church government, with a command; This charge I commit to thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on theé, that thou by thein mightest war a good warfare; which is plain enough thus expounded; this charge I commit to thee, wherein I now go about to instruct thee how thou shalt set up church discipline, that thou mightest war a good warfare, bearing thyself constantly and faithfully in the ministry, which in the first to the Corinthians is also called a warfare; and so after a kind of parenthesis concerning Hymenæus, he returns to his command, though under the mild word of exhorting, chapter second, verse first; I exhort therefore;' as if he had interrupted his former command by the occasional mention of Hymenæus. More beneath in the fourteenth verse of the third chapter, when he hath delivered the duties of bishops or presbyters, and deacons, not once naming any other order in the church, he thus adds; These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly;' such necessity it seems there was, 'but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God.' From

this place it may be justly asked, whether Timothy, by this here written, might know what was to be known concerning the orders of church governors or no? If he might, then in such a clear text as this may we know too without further jangle; if he might not, then did St Paul write insufficiently, and moreover said not true, for he saith here he might know; and I persuade myself he did know ere this was written, but that the apostle had more regard to the instruction of us, than to the informing of him.

In the fifth chapter, after some other church precepts concerning discipline, mark what a dreadful command follows, verse twentyfirst; I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things.' And as if all were not yet sure enough, he closes up the epistle with an adjuring charge thus; 'I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, that thou keep this commandment ;' that is, the whole commandment concerning discipline, being the main purpose of the epistle; although Hooker would fain have this denouncement referred to the particular precept going before, because the word commandment is in the singular number, not remembering that even in the first chapter of this epistle, the word commandment is used in a plural sense, verse fifth. 'Now the end of the commandment is charity;' and what more frequent than in like manner to say, the law of Moses? So that either to restrain the significance too much or too much to enlarge it, would make the adjuration either not so weighty, or not so pertinent. And thus we find here that the rules of church discipline are not only commanded, but hedged about with such a terrible impalement of commands, as he that will break through wilfully to violate the least of them, must hazard the wounding of