fcriptures, and thereto imploring God's grace, while the admirers of antiquity have been beating their brains about their ambones, their dyptichs, and meniaias? Now, he that cannot tell of ftations and indictions, nor has wafted his precious hours in the endless conferring of councils and conclaves that demolith one another, (although I know many of thofe that pretend to be great rabbies in these ftudies, have fcarce faluted them from the ftrings, and the titlepage; or to give them more, have bren but the ferrets and moufehunts of an index :) yet what paftor or minifter, how learned, religious, or difcrete foever, does not now bring both his cheeks full blown with oecumenical and fynodical, fhall be counted a lank, fhallow, infufficient man, yea a dunce, and not worthy to speak about reformation of church-difcipline. But I truft they for whom God hath referved the honour of reforming this church, will eafily perceive their adverfaries' drift in thus calling for antiquity: they fear the plain field of the fcriptures; the chafe is too hot; they feek the dark, the bushy, the tangled foreft, they would imbofk: they feel themfelves ftrook in the transparent ftreams of divine truth; they would plunge, and tumble, and think to lie hid in the foul weeds and muddy waters, where no plummet can reach the bottom. But let them 'beat themfelves like whales, and spend their oil till they be dragged afhore: though wherefore fhould the miniters give them fo much line for fhifts and delays? wherefore should they not urge only the gofpel, and hold it ever in their faces like a mirror of diamond, till it dazzle and pierce their mifty eyeballs? maintaining it the honour of its abfolute fufficiency and fupremacy inviolable: for if the fcripture be for reformation, and antiquity to boot, it is but an advantage to the dozen, it is no winning caft: and though antiquity be against it, while the fcriptures be for it, the caufe is as good as ought to be wifhed, antiquity itself fitting judge. But to draw to an end; the fecond fort of those that may be justly numbered among the hinderers of reformation, are libertines; thefe fuggeft that the difcipline fought would be intolerable for one bishop now in a diocefe, we should then have a pope in every parifh. It will not be requifite requifite to answer these men, but only to discover them; for reason they have none, but luft and licentiousness, and therefore answer can have none. It is not any discipline that they could live under, it is the corruption and remiffnefs of difcipline that they feek. Epifcopacy duly executed, yea, the turkish and jewish rigour against whoring and drinking; the dear and tender difcipline of a father, the fociable and loving reproof of a brother, the bofom admonition of a friend, is a prefbytery, and a confiftory to them. It is only the merry friar in Chaucer can difple * them. Full sweetly heard he confeffion, And fo I leave them; and refer the political discourse of episcopacy to a second book. * A contraction of difciple. OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. THE SECOND BOOK. SIR, Ir is a work good and prudent to be able to guide one man; of larger extended virtue to order well one house: but to govern a nation piously and juftly, which only is to fay happily, is for a fpirit of the greateft fize, and divineft mettle. And certainly of no lefs a mind, nor of less excellence in another way, were they who by writing laid the folid and true foundations of this fcience, which being of greatest importance to the life of man, yet there is no art that hath been more cankered in her principles, more foiled, and flubbered with aphorifming pedantry, than the art of policy; and that moft, where a man would think should leaft be, in christian commonwealths. They teach not, that to govern well, is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which fprings from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that), and that which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God, which in one word we call godliness; and that this is the true flourishing of a land, other things follow as the fhadow does the fubflance; to teach thus were mere pulpitry to them. This is the masterpiece of a modern politician, how to qualify and mould the fufferance and subjection of the people to the length of that foot that is to tread on their necks; how rapine may serve itself with the fair and honourable pretences of public good; how the puny law may be brought under the 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 jealoufy. 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 personage, one mighty growth and ftature of an honeft man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look what the grounds and caufes 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 separate and diftinguifh 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 cut Tacitus into flivers and fleaks, we shall presently 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 vifible 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 see what he thought of the policy of England; being required by Lucius, the firft Chriftian king of this ifland, to give his counfel 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 gospel, as the bishops dare not deny, we may well conclude of what late ftanding this pofition is, newly calculated for the altitude of bifhop-elevation, and lettuce for their lips. But by what example can they fhow, that the form of church-difcipline must 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 estate, if we furvey the ftory from the giving of the law to the Herods; yet did one manner of priestly government ferve without inconvenience to all these tcmporal mutations; it ferved the mild ariftocracy of elective dukes, and heads of tribes joined with them; the dictatorship of the judges, the cafy or hardhanded monarchies, the domeftic or foreign tyrannies: laftly, the Roman fenate from without, the Jewish fenate 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 magiftrate in their several func |