fhould be fo thought, ask not them, but ask their bellies, They had found a good tabernacle, they fate under a fpreading vine, their lot was fallen in a fair inheritance, And these perhaps were the chief impeachments of a more found rectifying the church in the queen's time.

From this period I count to begin our times, which because they concern us more nearly, and our own eyes and ears can give us the ampler fcope to judge, will require a more exact fearch; and to effect this the speedier, I fhall diftinguish fuch as I efteem to be the hinderers of reformation into three forts, Antiquitarians (for so I had rather call them than antiquaries, whofe labours are useful and laudable). 2. Libertines. 3. Politicians.

To the votarifts of antiquity I shall think to have fully answered, if I fhall be able to prove out of antiquity, First, that if they will conform our bifhops to the purer times, they must mew their feathers, and their pounces, and make but curtailed bishops of them; and we know they hate to be docked and clipped, as much as to be put down outright. Secondly, that thofe purer times were corrupt, and their books corrupted foon after. Thirdly, that the best of those that then wrote difclaim that any man fhould repofe on them, and fend all to the fcriptures.

First therefore, if thofe that overaffect antiquity will follow the fquare thereof, their bishops must be elected by the hands of the whole church. The ancienteft of the extant fathers, Ignatius, writing to the Philadelphians, faith, "that it belongs to them as to the church of God "to choose a bishop." Let no man cavil, but take the church of God as meaning the whole confiftence of orders and members, as St. Paul's epiftles exprefs, and this likewife being read over: befides this, it is there to be marked, that thofe Philadelphians are exhorted to choose a bishop of Antioch. Whence it feems by the way that there was not that wary limitation of diocese in thofe times, which is confirmed even by a faft friend of epifcopacy, Camden, who cannot but love bishops as well as old coins, and his much lamented monafteries, for antiquity's fake. He writes in his defcription of Scotland, "That over all the world bifhops had no certain

diocele

diocese till pope Dionyfius about the year 268 did cut them out; and that the bishops of Scotland executed their function in what place foever they came indifferently, and without diftinction, till king Malcolm the third, about the year 1070." Whence may be gueffed what their function was: was it to go about circled with a band of rooking officials, with cloakbags full of citations, and proceffes to be ferved by a corporality of griffonlike promoters and apparitors? Did he go about to pitch down his court, as an empiric does his bank, to inveigle in all the money of the country? No certainly it would not have been permitted him to exercife any fuch function indifferently wherever he came. And verily fome fuch matter it was as want of a fat diocese that kept our Britain bishops fo poor in the primitive times, that being called to the council of Ariminum in the year 359, they had not wherewithal to defray the charges of their journey, but were fed and lodged upon the Emperor's coft; which muft needs be no accidental but usual poverty in them: for the author, Sulpitius Severus, in his 2d book of Church-Hiftory praises them, and avouches it praifeworthy in a bifhop to be fo poor as to have nothing of his own. But to return to the ancient election of bifhops, that it could not lawfully be without the confent of the people is fo exprefs in Cyprian, and so often to be met with, that to cite each place at large, were to tranflate a good part of the volume; therefore touching the chief paffages, I refer the reft to whom fo lift perufe the author himfelf: in the 24th epiftle : "If a bishop," faith he, "be once made and allowed by the testimony and judgment of his colleagues and the people, no other can be made." In the 55th, "When a bifhip is made by the fuffrage of all the people in peace." In the 68th mark but what he fays; "The people chiefly hath power either of choofing worthy ones, or refufing unworthy:" this he there proves by authorities out of the Old and New Teftament, and with folid reafons: these were his antiquities.

This voice of the people, to be had ever in epifcopal elections, was fo well known before Cyprian's time, even to those that were without the church, that the emperor

Alexander

Alexander Severus defired to have his governors of provinces chofen in the fame manner, as Lampridius can tell; fo little thought it he offenfive to monarchy. And if fingle authorities perfuade not, hearken what the whole general council of Nicæa, the first and famousest of all the reft, determines, writing a fynodical epiftle to the African churches, to warn them of Arianifm; it exhorts them to choose orthodox bishops in the place of the dead, fo they be worthy, and the people choose them; whereby they seem to make the people's affent fo neceffary, that merit, without their free choice, were not sufficient to make a bishop. What would ye fay now, grave fathers, if you should wake and fee unworthy bishops, or rather no bishops, but Egyptian taskmasters of ceremonies thruft purpofely upon the groaning church, to the affliction and vexation of God's people? It was not of old that a confpiracy of bishops could fruftrate and fob off the right of the people; for we may read how St. Martin, foon after Conftantine, was made bishop of Turon in France, by the people's confent from all places thereabout, maugre all the oppofition that the bishops could make. Thus went matters of the church almost 400 years after Christ, and very probably far lower: for Nicephorus Phocas the Greek emperor, whofe reign fell near the 1000 year of our Lord, having done many things tyrannically, is faid by Cedrenus to have done nothing more grievous and difpleafing to the people, than to have enacted that no bishop fhould be chofen without his will; fo long did this right remain to the people in the midft of other palpable corruptions. Now for epifcopal dignity, what it was, fee out of Ignatius, who in his epiftle to thofe of Trallis, confeffeth," That the prefbyters are his fellow-counfellors and fellow-benchers." And Cyprian in many places, as in the 6, 41, 52, epiftles, fpeaking of prefbyters, calls them his comprefbyters, as if he deemed himfelf no other, whenas by the fame place it appears he was a bishop; he calls them brethren, but that will be thought his meeknefs: yea, but the prefbyters and deacons writing to him think they do him honour enough, when they phrafe him no higher than brother Cyprian, and dear Cyprian in the 20 épiftle.

For

For their authority it is evident not to have been fingle, but depending on the counfel of the prefbyters, as from Ignatius was erewhile alleged; and the fame Cyprian acknowledges as much in the 6 epiftle, and adds thereto, that he had determined, from his entrance into the office of bifhop, to do nothing without the confent of his people, and fo in the 31 epiftle, for it were tedious to courfe through all his writings, which are fo full of the like affertions, infomuch that even in the womb and centre of apoftafy, Rome itself, there yet remains a glimpse of this truth; for the pope himself, as a learned English writer notes well, performeth all ecclefiaftical jurifdiction as in confiftory among his cardinals, which were originally but the parish priests of Rome. Thus then did the spirit of unity and meekness inspire and animate every joint and finew of the myftical body; but now the graveft and worthieft minifter, a true bishop of his fold, hall be reviled and ruffled by an infulting and only canon-wife prelate, as if he were some flight paltry companion and the people of God, redeemed and washed with Chrift's blood, and dignified with so many glorious titles of faints, and fons in the gospel, are now no better reputed than impure ethnics and lay dogs; ftones, and pillars, and crucifixes, have now the honour and the alms due to Chrift's living members; the table of communion, now become a table of separation, ftands like an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the laics, whilft the obscene and furfeited priest fcruples not to paw and mammoc the facramental bread, as familiarly as his tavern biscuit. And thus the people, vilified and rejected by them, give over the earnest study of virtue and godlinefs, as a thing of greater purity than they need, and the fearch of divine knowledge as a myftery too high for their capacities, and only for churchmen to meddle with; which is what the prelates defire, that when they have brought us back to popish blindnefs, we might commit to their difpofe the whole mar naging of our falvation, for they think it was never fair world with them fince that time. But he that will mould a modern bishop into a primitive, muft yield him to be elected

elected by the popular voice, undiocesed, unrevenued, unlorded, and leave him nothing but brotherly equality, matchless temperance, frequent fafting, inceflant prayer and preaching, continual watchings and labours in his miniftry; which what a rich booty it would be, what a plump endowment to the many-benefice-gaping-mouth of a prelate, what a relifh it would give to his canaryfucking, and fwan-eating palate, let old bifhop Mountain judge for me.

How little therefore thofe ancient times make for modern bishops, hath been plainly difcourfed; but let them make for them as much as they will, yet why we ought not to ftand to their arbitrement, fhall now appear by a threefold corruption which will be found upon them. 1. The best times were fpreadingly infected. 2. The best men of those times foully tainted. 3. The beft writings of those men dangerously adulterated. Thefe pofitions are to be made good out of thofe times witneffing of themfelves. Firft, Ignatius in his early days teftifies to the churches of Afia, that even then herefies were fprung up, and rife every where, as Eufebius relates in his 3 book, 35 chap. after the Greek number. And Hegefippus, a grave church writer of prime antiquity, affirms in the fame book of Eufebius, c. 32: "That while the apostles were on earth, the depravers of doctrine did but lurk; but they once gone, with open forehead they durft preach down the truth with falfities." Yea, thofe that are reckoned for orthodox, began to make fad and shameful rents in the church about the trivial celebration of feafis, not agreeing when to keep Eafter-day; which controverfy grew fo hot, that Victor the bishop of Rome excommunicated all the churches of Afia for no other caufe, and was worthily thereof reproved by Irenæus. For can any found theologer think, that these great fathers underftood what was gofpel, or what was excommunication? Doubtlefs that which led the good men into fraud and errour was, that they attended more to the near tradition of what they heard the apoftles fometimes did, than to what they had left written, not confidering that many things which they did were by the apoftles themselves profeffed to be done only for the prefent, and of mere indulgence