more excellent; the care also and judgment to be used in the winning of fouls, which is thought to be fufficient in every worthy minifter, is an ability above that which is required in ordination: for many may be able to judge who is fit to be made a minifter, that would not be found fit to be made minifters themfelves; as it will not be denied that he may be the competent judge of a neat picture, or elegant poem, that cannot limn the like. Why therefore we fhould conftitute a fuperior order in the church to perform an office which is not only every minifter's function, but inferior also to that which he has a confeffed right to; and why this fuperiority fhould remain thus ufurped, fome wife Epimenides tell us. Now for jurifdiction, this dear faint of the prelates, it will be best to confider, firft, what it is that fovereign Lord, who in the discharge of his holy anointment from God the Father, which made him fupreme bishop of our fouls, was fo humble as to fay, "Who made me a judge, or a divider over ye?" hath taught us that a churchman's jurisdiction is no more but to watch over his flock in season, and out of season, to deal by sweet and efficacious inftructions, gentle admonitions, and fometimes rounder reproofs : against negligence or obftinacy, will be required a roufing volley of paftorly threatenings; against a perfifting ftubbornness, or the fear of a reprobate fenfe, a timely separation from the flock by that interdictive sentence, left his converfation unprohibited, or unbranded, might breathe a peftilential murrain into the other fheep. In fum, his jurisdiction is to fee the thriving and profpering of that which he hath planted: what other work the prelates have found for chancellors and fuffragans, delegates and officials, with all the Hell-peftering rabble of fumners and apparitors, is but an invafion upon the temporal magiftrate, and affected by them as men that are not afhamed of the enfign and banner of antichrist. But true evangelical jurifdiction or difcipline is no more, as was said, than for a minifter to fee to the thriving and profpering of that which he hath planted. And which is the worthieft work of thefe two, to plant as every minifter's office is equally with the bishops, or to tend that which is planted, which the blind and undifcerning prelates prelates call jurifdiction, and would appropriate to themfelves as a bufinefs of higher dignity? Have patience therefore a little, and hear a law cafe. A certain man of large poffeffions had a fair garden, and kept therein an honeft and laborious fervant, whose skill and profeffion was to fet or fow all wholesome herbs, and delightful flowers, according to every feafon, and whatever elle was to be done in a well-hufbanded nursery of plants and fruits. Now, when the time was come that he fhould cut his hedges, prune his trees, look to his tender flips, and pluck up the weeds that hindered their growth, he gets him up by break of day, and makes account to do what was needful in his garden; and who would think that any other should know better than he how the day's work was to be fpent? Yet for all this there comes another strange gardener that never knew the foil, never handled a dibble or fpade to fet the leaft potherb that grew there, much lefs had endured an hour's sweat or chilnefs, and yet challenges as his right the binding or unbinding of every flower, the clipping of every bush, the weeding and worming of every bed, both in that and all other gardens thereabout. The honeft gardener, that ever fince the daypeep, till now the fun was grown fomewhat rank, had wrought painfully about his banks and feedplots, at his commanding voice turns fuddenly about with fome wonder; and although he could have well beteemed to have thanked him of the cafe he profferred, yet loving his own handywork, modeftly refused him, telling him withal, that, for his part, if he had thought much of his own pains, he could for once have committed the work to one of his fellow labourers, for as much as it is well known to be a matter of lefs fkill and less labour to keep a garden handsome, than it is to plant it, or contrive it, and that he had already performed himself. No, faid the ftranger, this is neither for you nor your fellows to meddle with, but for me only that am for this purpose in dignity far above you; and the provifion which the Lord of the foil allows me in this office is, and that with good reafon, tenfold your wages. The gardener smiled and shook his head; but what was determined determined, I cannot tell you till the end of this parlia ment. Remonft. If in time you fhall fee wooden chalices, and wooden priefts, thank yourselves. Anfw. It had been happy for this land, if your priests had been but only wooden; all England knows they have been to this ifland not wood, but wormwood, that have infected the third part of our waters, like that apoftate star in the Revelation, that many fouls have died of their bitterness; and if you mean by wooden, illiterate or contemptible, there was no want of that fort among you; and their number increafing daily, as their laziness, their tavern hunting, their neglect of all found literature, and their liking of doltifh and monaftical schoolmen daily increased. What, fhould I tell you how the univerfities, that men look fhould be fountains of learning and knowledge, have been poisoned and choaked under your governance ? And if to be wooden, be to be bafe, where could there be found among all the reformed churches, nay in the church of Rome itself, a baser brood of flattering and time-ferving priests? according as God pronounces by Isaiah, the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. As for your young scholars, that petition for bithoprics and deaneries to encourage them in their ftudies, and that many gentlemen elfe will not put their fons to learning; away with fuch young mercenary ftriplings, and their fimoniacal fathers; God has no need of fuch, they have no part or lot in his vineyard: they may as well fue for nunneries, that they may have fome convenient ftowage for their withered daughters, because they cannot give them portions anfwerable to the pride and vanity they have bred them in. This is the root of all our mischief, that which they allege for the encouragement of their studies fhould be cut away forewith as the very bait of pride and ambition, the very garbage that draws together all the fowls of prey and ravin in the land to come and gorge upon the church. How can it be but ever unhappy to the church of England, while fhe fhall think to entice men to the pure fervice of God by the fame means that were ufed to tempt our Saviour to the service of the devil, by laying before him VOL. I. honour honour and preferment? Fit profeffors indeed are they like to be, to teach others that godlinefs with content is great gain, whenas their godlinefs of teaching had not been but for worldly gain. The heathen philofophers thought that virtue was for its own fake ineftimable, and the greatest gain of a teacher to make a foul virtuous; fo Xenophon writes of Socrates, who never bargained with any for teaching them; he feared not left those who had received fo high a benefit from him, would not of their own free will return him all poffible thanks. Was moral virtue fo lovely, and fo alluring, and heathen men fo enamoured of her, as to teach and ftudy her with greatest neglect and contempt of worldly profit and advancement? And is chriftian piety fo homely and fo unpleasant, and chriftian men fo cloyed with her, as that none will study and teach her, but for lucre and preferment! O ftalegrown piety! O gospel rated as cheap as thy mafter, at thirty pence, and not worth the ftudy, unless thou canft buy thofe that will fell thee! O race of Capernaïtans, fenfelefs of divine doctrine, and capable only of loaves and bellycheer! But they will grant, perhaps, picty may thrive, but learning will decay: I would fain afk thefe men at whofe hands they feek inferiour things, as wealth, honour, their dainty fare, their lofty houfes? No doubt but they will foon anfwer, that all these things they feek at God's hands. Do they think then that all thefe meaner and fuperfluous things come from God, and the divine gift of learning from the den of Plutus, or the cave of Mammon? Certainly never any clear fpirit nurfed up from brighter influences, with a foul enlarged to the dimenfions of fpacious art and high knowledge, ever entered there but with fcorn, and thought it ever foul difdain to make pelf or ambition the reward of his ftudies; it being the greatest honour, the greatest fruit and proficiency of learned ftudies to despise these things. Not liberal fcience, but illiberal muft that needs be, that mounts in contemplation merely for money. And what would it avail us to have a hireling clergy, though never fo learned? For fuch can have neither true wisdom nor grace; and then in vain do men truft in learning, where thefe be wanting. If in lefs lefs noble and almost mechanic arts, according to the definitions of those authors, he is not efteemed to deferve the name of a complete architect, an excellent painter, or the like, that bears not a generous mind above the peasantly regard of wages and hire; much more must we think him a moft imperfect, and incomplete divine, who is so far from being a contemner of filthy lucre, that his whole divinity is moulded and bred up in the beggarly and brutish hopes of a fat prebendary, deanery, or bifhopric; which poor and lowpitched defires, if they do but mix with thofe other heavenly intentions that draw a man to this study, it is juftly expected that they should bring forth a baseborn iffue of divinity, like that of those imperfect and putrid crcatures that receive a crawling life from two moft unlike procreants, the fun and mud. And in matters of religion, there is not any thing more intolerable than a learned fool, or a learned hypocrite; the one is ever cooped up at his empty fpeculations, a fot, an ideot for any ufe that mankind can make of him, or else fowing the world with nice and idle queftions, and with much toil and difficulty wading to his auditors up to the eyebrows in deep fhallows that wet not the inftep a plain unlearned man that lives well by that light which he has, is better and wiser, and edifies others more towards a godly and happy life than he. The other is still ufing his fophifticated arts, and bending all his ftudies how to make his infatiate avarice and ambition feem pious and orthodoxal, by painting his lewd and deceitful principles with a fmooth and gloffy varnish in a doctrinal way, to bring about his wickedeft purposes. Inftead of the great harm therefore that these men fear upon the diffolving of prelates, what an ease and happiness will it be to us, when tempting rewards are taken away, that the cunningest and most dangerous mercenaries will ceafe of themfelves to frequent the fold, whom otherwife fcarce all the prayers of the faithful could have kept back from devouring the flock! But a true paftor of Christ's sending hath this efpecial mark, that for greatest labours and greatest merits in the church, he requires either nothing, if he could fo fubfift, or a very common and reasonable supply of human neceffaries: O 2 we |