his conscience even unto death. Yet all this notwithstanding, we shall find them broken well nigh all by the fair pretenders even of the next ages, no less to the contempt of him whom they feign to be the archfounder of prelaty, St Peter, who by what he writes in the fifth chapter of his first epistle, should seem to be far another man than tradition reports him. There he commits to the presbyters only full authority both of feeding the flock and episcopating, and commands that obedience be given to them as to the mighty hand of God, which is his mighty ordinance. Yet all this was as nothing to repel the venturous boldness of innovation that ensued, changing the decrees of God that are immutable as if they had been breathed by man.

6

Nevertheless, when Christ, by those visions of St John, foreshows the reformation of his church, he bids him take his reed and mete it out again after the first pattern; for he prescribes him no other. Arise,' said the angel, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.' What is there in the world can measure men but discipline? Our word ruling imports no less. Doctrine indeed is the measure, or at least the reason of the measure, it is true; but unless the measure be applied to that which it is to measure, how can it actually do its proper work? Whether therefore discipline be all one with doctrine, or the particular application thereof to this or that person, we all agree that doctrine must be such only as is commanded; or whether it be something really differing from doctrine, yet was it only of God's appointment, as being the most adequate measure of the church and her children, which is here the office of a great evangelist and the reed given him from heaven. But that part of the temple which is not thus measured, so far is it from being in God's tuition or delight, that in the following verse he

rejects it. However in show and visibility it may seem a part of his church, yet inasmuch as it lies thus unmeasured, he leaves it to be trampled by the gentiles; that is, to be polluted with idolatrous and gentilish rites and ceremonies. And that the principal reformation here foretold, is already come to pass, as well in discipline as in doctrine, the state of our neighbour churches afford us to behold. Thus, through all the periods and changes of the church, it hath been proved that God hath still reserved to himself the right of enacting church government.

CHAPTER III.

That it is dangerous and unworthy the Gospel, to hold that Church Government is to be patterned by the Law, as Bishop Andrews and the Primate of Armagh maintain.

WE E may return now from this interposing difficulty thus removed, to affirm, that since church government is so strictly commanded in God's word, the first and greatest reason why we should submit thereto, is because God hath so commanded. But whether of these two, prelaty or presbytery can prove itself to be supported by this first and greatest reason, must be the next dispute ; wherein this position is to be first laid down, as granted, that I may not follow a chase rather than an argument, that one of these two, and none other, is of God's ordaining; and if it be, that ordinance must be evident in the gospel. For the imperfect and obscure institution of the law, which the apostles themselves doubt not ofttimes to vilify, cannot give rules to the complete and glorious ministration of the gospel, which looks on the law as on a child, not as on a tutor. And that the prelates have

no sure foundation in the gospel, their own guiltiness doth manifest .They would not else run questing up as high as Adam to fetch their original, as it is said one of them lately did in public. To which assertion, had I heard it, because I see they are so insatiable of antiquity, I should have gladly assented, and confessed them yet more ancient; for Lucifer, before Adam, was the first prelate angel; and both he, as is commonly thought, and our forefather Adam, as we all know, for aspiring above their orders, were miserably degraded. But others better advised are content to receive their beginning from Aaron and his sons, among whom bishop Andrews of late years, and in these times the primate of Armagh, for their learning, are reputed the best able to say what may be said in this opinion.

The primate, in his discourse about the original of episcopacy newly revised, begins thus; The ground of episcopacy is fetched partly from the pattern prescribed by God in the Old Testament, and partly from the imitation thereof brought in by the apostles.' Herein I must entreat to be excused of the desire I have to be satisfied, how, for example, the ground of episcopacy is fetched partly from the example of the Old Testament, by whom next, and by whose authority; secondly, how the church government under the gospel can be rightly called an imitation of that in the Old Testament; for that the gospel is the end and fulfilling of the law, our liberty also from the bondage of the law, I plainly read. How then the ripe age of the gospel should be put to school again and learn to govern herself from the infancy of the law, the stronger to imitate the weaker, the freeman to follow the captive, the learned to be lessoned by the rude, will be a hard undertaking to evince from any of those principles which either art or inspiration hath

written.

If any thing done by the apostles may be drawn howsoever to a likeness of something Mosaical, if it cannot be proved that it was done of purpose in imitation, as having the right thereof grounded in nature, and not in ceremony or type, it will little avail the matter. The whole Judaic law is either political, and to take pattern by that, no christian nation ever thought itself obliged in conscience; or moral, which contains in it the observation of whatsoever is substantially and perpetually true and good, either in religion or course of life. That which is thus moral, besides what we fetch from those unwritten laws and ideas which nature hath engraven in us, the gospel, as stands with her dignity most, lectures to her from her own authentic handwriting and command, not copies out from the borrowed manuscript of a subservient scroll, by way of imitating. As well might she be said in her sacrament of water, to imitate the baptism of John. What though she retain excommunication used in the synagogue? retain the morality of the sabbath? She does not therefore imitate the law, her underling, but perfect her. All that was morally delivered from the law to the gospel, in the office of the priests and Levites, was, that there should be a ministry set apart to teach and discipline the church; both which duties the apostles thought good to commit to the presbyters. And if any distinction of honor were to be made among them, they directed it should be to those not that only rule well, but especially to those that labor in the word and doctrine. By which we are taught, that laborious teaching is the most honorable prelaty that one minister can have above another in the gospel. If, therefore, the superiority of bishopship be grounded on the priesthood as a part of the moral law, it cannot be said to be an imitation; for it were ridiculous that morality should imitate morality, which

ever was the same thing. This very word of patterning or imitating, excludes episcopacy from the solid and grave ethical law, and betrays it to be a mere child of ceremony, or likelier some misbegotten thing, that having plucked the gay feathers of her obsolete bravery, to hide her own deformed barrenness, now vaunts and glories in her stolen plumes. In the mean while, what danger there is against the very life of the gospel, to make in any thing the typical law her pattern, and how impossible in that which touches the priestly government, I shall use such light as I have received, to lay open.

It cannot be unknown by what expressions the holy apostle St Paul spares not to explain to us the nature and condition of the law, calling those ordinances which were the chief and essential offices of the priests, the elements and rudiments of the world, both weak and beggarly. Now to breed, and bring up the children of the promise, the heirs of liberty and grace, under such a kind of government as is professed to be but an imitation of that ministry which engendered to bondage the sons of Agar; how can this be but a foul injury and derogation, if not a cancelling of that birthright and immunity which Christ hath purchased for us with his blood? For the ministration of the law, consisting of carnal things, drew to it such a ministry as consisted of carnal respects, dignity, precedence, and the like. And such a ministry established in the gospel as is founded upon the points and terms of superiority and nests itself in worldly honors, will draw to it, and we see it doth, such a religion as runs back again to the old pomp and glory of the flesh; for doubtless there is a certain attraction and magnetic force betwixt the religion and the ministerial form thereof. If the religion be pure, spiritual, simple, and lowly, as the gospel most truly is, such must the face