the wardship and control of luft and will: in which attempt if they fall fhort, then muft a fuperficial colour of reputation by all means, direct or indirect, be gotten to wash over the unfightly bruife of honour. To make men governable in this manner, their precepts mainly tend to break a national fpirit and courage, by countenancing open riot, luxury, and ignorance, till having thus disfigured and made men beneath men, as Juno in the fable of Io, they deliver up the poor transformed heifer of the commonwealth to be ftung and vexed with the breefe and goad of oppreffion, under the cuftody of fome Argus with a hundred eyes of jealousy. To be plainer, fir, how to fodder, how to ftop a leak, how to keep up the floating carcafe of a crazy and difeafed monarchy or ftate, betwixt wind and water, fwimming ftill upon her own dead lees, that now is the deep defign of a politician. Alas, fir! a commonwealth ought to be but as one huge chriftian perfonage, one mighty growth and ftature of an honeft man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look what the grounds and causes are of fingle happiness to one man, the fame ye fhall find them to a whole ftate, as Ariftotle, both in his Ethics and Politics, from the principles of reafon lays down: by confequence, therefore, that which is good and agreeable to monarchy, will appear fooneft to be fo, by being good and agreeable to the true welfare of every Chriftian; and that which can be justly proved hurtful and offenfive to every true Chriftian, will be evinced to be alike hurtful to monarchy: for God forbid that we should feparate and distinguish the end and good of a monarch, from the end and good of the monarchy, or of that, from Chriftianity. How then this third and laft fort that hinder reformation, will justify that it stands not with reason of state, I much mufe; for certain I am, the Bible is fhut against them, as certain that neither Plato nor Ariftotle is for their turns. What they can bring us now from the schools of Loyola with his Jefuits, or their Malvezzi, that can cút Tacitus into flivers and fleaks, we fhall prefently hear. They allege, 1. That the church-government must be conformable to the civil polity; next, that no form of church-government is agreeable to monarchy, but that

of

of bishops. Muft church-government that is appointed in the gospel, and has chief respect to the foul, be conformable and pliant to civil, that is arbitrary, and chiefly converfant about the visible and external part of man? This is the very maxim that moulded the calves of Bethel and of Dan; this was the quinteffence of Jeroboam's policy, he made religion conform to his politic interests; and this was the fin that watched over the Ifraelites till their final captivity. If this ftate principle come from the prelates, as they affect to be counted ftatifts, let them look back to Eleutherius bishop of Rome, and fee what he thought of the policy of England; being required by Lucius, the firft Chriftian king of this ifland, to give his counsel for the founding of religious laws, little thought he of this fage caution, but bids him betake himself to the Old and New Teftament, and receive direction from them how to adminifter both church and commonwealth; that he was God's vicar, and therefore to rule by God's laws; that the edicts of Cæfar we may at all times difallow, but the ftatutes of God for no reason we may reject. Now certain, if church-government be taught in the gofpel, as the bishops dare not deny, we may well conclude of what late ftanding this pofition is, newly calculated for the altitude of bishop-elevation, and lettuce for their lips. But by what example can they fhow, that the form of church-difcipline muft be minted and modelled out to fecular pretences? The ancient republic of the Jews is evident to have run through all the changes of civil eftate, if we furvey the story from the giving of the law to the Herods; yet did one manner of priestly government ferve without inconvenience to all thefe temporal mutations; it ferved the mild ariftocracy of elective dukes, and heads of tribes joined with them; the dictatorship of the judges, the easy or hardhanded monarchies, the domeftic or foreign tyrannies: laftly, the Roman fenate from without, the Jewish senate at home, with the Galilean tetrarch; yet the Levites had fome right to deal in civil affairs: but feeing the evangelical precept forbids churchmen to intermeddle with worldly employments, what interweavings or interworkings can knit the minister and the magistrate in their several func

tions, to the regard of any precife correfpondency? Seeing that the churchman's office is only, to teach men the Chriftian faith, to exhort all, to encourage the good, to admonish the bad, privately the lefs offender, publicly the fcandalous and ftubborn; to cenfure and feparate, from the communion of Chrift's flock, the contagious and incorrigible, to receive with joy and fatherly compaffion the penitent: all this must be done, and more than this is beyond any church-authority. What is all this either here or there, to the temporal regiment of weal public, whether it be popular, princely, or monarchical? Where doth it entrench upon the temporal governor? where does it come in his walk? where doth it make inroad upon his jurisdiction? Indeed if the minifter's part be rightly difcharged, it renders him the people more conscionable, quiet, and easy to be governed; if otherwise, his life and doctrine will declare him. If, therefore, the conftitution of the church be already fet down by divine prefcript, as all fides confefs, then can fhe not be a handmaid to wait on civil commodities and refpects; and if the nature and limits of church-difcipline be fuch, as are either helpful to all political estates. indifferently, or have no particular relation to any, then is there no neceffity, nor indeed poffibility, of linking the one with the other in a special conformation.

Now for their fecond conclufion, "That no form of church-government is agreeable to monarchy, but that of bifhops," although it fall to pieces of itfelf by that. which hath been faid; yet to give them play, front and rear, it shall be my task to prove that epifcopacy, with that authority which it challenges in England, is not only not agreeable, but tending to the deftruction of monarchy. While the primitive paftors of the church of God laboured faithfully in their miniftry, tending only their fheep, and not feeking, but avoiding all worldly matters as clogs, and indeed derogations and debasements to their high calling; little needed the princes and potentates of the earth, which way foever the gospel was fpread, to ftudy ways how to make a coherence between the church's polity and theirs: therefore, when Pilate, heard once our Saviour Chrift profeffing that " his king

dom

dom was not of this world," he thought the man could not ftand much in Cæfar's light, nor much endamage the Roman empire; for if the life of Chrift be hid to this world, much more is his fceptre unoperative, but in fpiritual things. And thus lived, for two or three ages, the fucceffors of the apoftles. But when, through Conftantine's lavish fuperftition, they forsook their first love, and fet themselves up two gods inftead, Mammon and their Belly; then taking advantage of the fpiritual power which they had on men's confciences, they began to caft a longing eye to get the body alfo, and bodily things into their command: upon which their carnal defires, the fpirit daily quenching and dying in them, knew no way to keep themselves up from falling to nothing, but by bolstering and fupporting their inward rottennefs by a carnal and outward ftrength. For a while they rather privily fought opportunity, than haftily difclofed their project; but when Conftantine was dead, and three or four emperors more, their drift became notorious and offenfive to the whole world; for while Theodofius the younger reigned, thus writes Socrates the hiftorian, in his 7th book, chap. 11. "Now began an ill name to flick upon the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, who beyond their priestly bounds now long ago had stepped into principality:" and this was scarce eighty years fince their raifing from the mcaneft worldly condition. Of courtesy now let any man tell me, if they draw to themselves a temporal ftrength and power out of Cæfar's dominion, is not Cæfar's empire thereby diminished? But this was a ftolen bit, hitherto he was but a caterpillar fecretly gnawing at monarchy; the next time you fhall fee him a wolf, a lion, lifting his paw against his raiser, as Petrarch expreffed it, and finally an open enemy and fubverter of the Greek empire. Philippicus and Leo, with divers other emperors after them, not without the advice of their patriarchs, and at length of a whole eastern council of three hundred and thirty-eight bifhops, threw the images out of churches as being decreed idolatrous.

Upon this goodly occafion, the bishop of Rome not only feizes the city, and all the territory about, into his own hands, and makes himself lord thereof, which till

then

then was governed by a Greek magiftrate, but abfolves all Italy of their tribute and obedience due to the emperor, because he obeyed God's commandment in abolishing idolatry.

Mark, fir, here, how the pope came by St. Peter's patrimony, as he feigns it; not the donation of Conftantine, but idolatry and rebellion got it him. Ye need but read Sigonius, one of his own fect, to know the story at large. And now to fhroud himself against a ftorm from the Greek continent, and provide a champion to bear him out in these practices, he takes upon him by papal fentence to unthrone Chilpericus the rightful king of France, and gives the kingdom to Pepin, for no other cause, but that he feemed to him the more active man: If he were a friend herein to monarchy, I know not; but to the monarch I need not afk what he was.

Having thus made Pepin his fast friend, he calls him into Italy against Aiftulphus the Lombard, that warred upon him for his late ufurpation of Rome, as belonging to Ravenna which he had newly won. Pepin, not unobedient to the pope's call, paffing into Italy, frees him out of danger, and wins for him the whole exarchate of Ravenna; which though it had been almost immediately before the hereditary poffeffion of that monarchy, which was his chief patron and benefactor, yet he takes and keeps it to himself as lawful prize, and given to St. Peter. What a dangerous fallacy is this, when a fpiritual man may fnatch to himself any temporal dignity or dominion, under pretence of receiving it for the church's ufe? Thus he claims Naples, Sicily, England, and what not? To be short, under fhow of his zeal against the errours of the Greek church, he never ceased baiting and goring the fucceffors of his best lord Conftantine, what by his barking curfes and excommunications, what by his hindering the western princes from aiding them against the Sarazens and Turks, unlefs when they humoured him; fo that it may be truly affirmed, he was the fubverfion and fall of that monarchy, which was the hoifting of him. This, befides Petrarch, whom I have cited, our Chaucer alfo hath obferved, and gives from hence a caution to England, to beware of her bishops in time, for VOL. I. that

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