SECT. XIII. REMONST. We do again profess, that if our bishops challenge any other power than was delegated to and required of Timothy and Titus, we shall yield them usurpers. buss shot over a file of words twelve deep, without authority to bid them stoop; or to make the word gift, like the river Mole in Surry, to run under the bottom of a long line, and so start up to govern the word presbytery, as in immediate syntaxis; a device ridiculous enough to make good that old wife's tale of a certain queen of England that sunk at Charing-cross, and rose up at Queenhithe. No marvel though the prelates be a troublesome generation, and, which way soever they turn them, put all things into a foul discomposure, when to maintain their domineering, they seek thus to rout and disarray the wise and well-couched order of Saint Paul's own words, using either a certain textual riot to chop off the hands of the word presbytery, or else a like kind of simony to clap the word gift between them. Besides, if the verse must be read according to this transposition, μὴ ἀμέλει τῶ ἐν σοὶ χαρίσματος τῷ πρεσβυrepis, it would be improper to call ordination xápiopa, whenas it is rather only xɛipiaoua, an outward testimony :f approbation; unless they will make it a sacrament, as the papists do: but surely the prelates would have Saint Paul's words ramp one over another, as they use to climb into their livings and bishoprics. Remonst. Neither need we give any other satisfac-place. The like may be said of Titus, (as those words tion to the point, than from Saint Paul himself, 2 Timothy i. 6, "Stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the imposition of my hands ;" mine, and not others. Answ. Ye are too quick; this last place is to be understood by the former; as the law of method, which bears chief sway in the art of teaching, requires, that clearest and plainest expressions be set foremost, to the end they may enlighten any following obscurity; and wherefore we should not attribute a right method to the teachableness of Scripture, there can be no reason given: to which method, if we shall now go contrary, besides the breaking of a logical rule, which the Remonstrant hitherto we see hath made little account of, we shall also put a manifest violence and impropriety upon a known word against his common signification, in binding a collective to a singular person. But if we shall, as logic (or indeed reason) instructs us, expound the latter place by the former cited, and understand "by the imposition of my hands," that is, of mine chiefly as an apostle, with the joint authority and assistance of the presbytery, there is nothing more ordinary or kindly in speech, than such a phrase as expresses only the chief in any action, and understands the rest. So that the imposition of Saint Paul's hands, without more expression in this place, cannot exclude the joint act of the presbytery affirmed by the former text. Remonst. In the mean while see, brethren, how bave with Simon fished all night, and caught nothing. Answ. If we fishing with Simon the apostle can catch nothing, see what you can catch with Simon Magus; for all his hooks and fishing implements he bequeathed among you. F you Answ. Ye cannot compare an ordinary bishop with Timothy, who was an extraordinary man, foretold and promised to the church by many prophecies, and his name joined as collateral with Saint Paul, in most of his apostolic epistles, even where he writes to the bishops of other churches, as those in Philippi. Nor can you prove out of the Scripture that Timothy was bishop of any particular place; for that wherein it is said in the third verse of the first epistle, " As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus," will be such a gloss to prove the constitution of a bishop by, as would not only be not so good as a Bourdeaux gloss, but scarce be received to varnish a vizard of Modona. All that can be gathered out of holy writ concerning Timothy is, that he was either an apostle, or an apostle's extraordinary vice-gerent, not confined to the charge of any import in the 5th verse,) that he was for that cause left in Crete, that he might supply or proceed to set in order that which St. Paul in apostolic manner had begun, for which he had his particular commission, as those words sound" as I had appointed thee." So that what he did in Crete, cannot so much be thought the exercise of an ordinary function, as the direction of an inspired mouth. No less may be gathered from the 2 Cor. viii. 23. Remonst. You descend to the angels of the seven Asian churches; your shift is, that the word angel is here taken collectively, not individually. Answ. That the word is collective, appears plainly, Revel. ii. First, Because the text itself expounds it so; for having spoken all the while as to the angel, the seventh verse concludes, that this was spoken to the churches. Now if the Spirit conclude collectively, and kept the same tenor all the way, for we see not where he particularizes; then certainly he must begin collectively, else the construction can be neither grammatical nor logical. Secondly, If the word angel be individual, then are the faults attributed to him individual: but they are such as for which God threatens to remove the candlestick out of its place, which is as much as to take away from that church the light of his truth; and we cannot think he will do so for one bishop's fault. Therefore those faults must be understood collective, and by consequence the subject of them collective. Thirdly, An individual cannot branch itself into subindividuals; but this word angel doth in the tenth verse. "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer; behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison." And the like from other places of this and the following chapter may be observed. Therefore it is no individual word, but a collective. as good a faculty to make iron swim, as you had to make light froth sink. Remonst. What is, if this be not, ordination and Fourthly, In the 24th verse this word Angel is made capable of a pronoun plural, which could not be, unless it were a collective. As for the supposed manuscript of Tecla, and two or three other copies that have ex-jurisdiction? punged the copulative, we cannot prefer them before the more received reading, and we hope you will not, against the translation of your mother the church of England, that passed the revise of your chiefest prelates: besides this, you will lay an unjust censure upon the much-praised bishop of Thyatira, and reckon him among those that had the doctrine of Jezebel, when the text says, he only suffered her. Whereas, if you will but let in a charitable conjunction, as we know your so much called for charity will not deny, then you plainly acquit the bishop, if you comprehend him in the name of angel, otherwise you leave his case very doubtful. Remonst. "Thou sufferest thy wife Jezebel :" was she wife to the whole company, or to one bishop alone? Answ. Not to the whole company doubtless, for that had been worse than to have been the Levite's wife in Gibeah but here among all those that constantly read it otherwise, whom you trample upon, your good mother of England is down again in the throng, who with the rest reads it, that woman Jezebel :' but suppose it were wife, a man might as well interpret that word figuratively, as her name Jezebel no man doubts to be a borrowed name. Answ. Indeed in the constitution and founding of a church, that some men inspired from God should have an extraordinary calling to appoint, to order, and dispose, must needs be. So Moses, though himself no priest, sanctified and ordained Aaron and his sons; but when all needful things be set, and regulated by the writings of the apostles, whether it be not a mere folly to keep up a superior degree in the church only for ordination and jurisdiction, it will be no hurt to debate awhile. The apostles were the builders, and, as it were, the architects of the christian church; wherein consisted their excellence above ordinary ministers ? A prelate would say in commanding, in controlling, in appointing, in calling to them, and sending from about them, to all countries, their bishops and archbishops as their deputies, with a kind of legantine power. No, no, vain prelates, this was but as the scaffolding of a new edifice, which for the time must board and overlook the highest battlements; but if the structure once finished, any passenger should fall in love with them, and pray that they might still stand, as being a singular grace and strengthening to the house, who would otherwise think, but that the man was presently to be laid hold on, and sent to his friends and kindred? The Remonst. Yet what makes this for a diocesan bishop? eminence of the apostles consisted in their powerful Much every way. Answ. No more than a special endorsement could make to puff up the foreman of a jury. If we deny you more precedence, than as the senior of any society, or deny you this priority to be longer than annual; prove you the contrary from hence, if you can. That you think to do from the title of eminence, Angel: alas, your wings are too short. It is not ordination nor jurisdiction that is angelical, but the heavenly message of the gospel, which is the office of all ministers alike; in which sense John the Baptist is called an Angel, which in Greek signifies a messenger, as oft as it is meant by a man, and might be so rendered here without treason to the hierarchy; but that the whole book soars to a prophetic pitch in types and allegories. Seeing then the reason of this borrowed name is merely to signify the preaching of the gospel, and that this preaching equally appertains to the whole ministry; hence may be drawn a fifth argument, that if the reason of this borrowed name Angel be equally collective and communicative to the whole preaching ministry of the place, then must the name be collectively and communicatively taken; but the reason, that is to say, the office, of preaching and watching over the flock, is equally collective and communicative: therefore the borrowed name itself is to be understood as equally collective and communicative to the whole preaching ministry of the place. And if you will contend still for a superiority in one person, you must ground it better than from this metaphor, which you may now deplore as the axehead that fell into the water, and say, Alas, master, for it was borrowed;" unless you have, preaching, their unwearied labouring in the word, their unquenchable charity, which, above all earthly respects, like a working flame, had spun up to such a height of pure desire, as might be thought next to that love which dwells in God to save souls; which, while they did, they were contented to be the offscouring of the world, and to expose themselves willingly to all afflic tions, perfecting thereby their hope through patience to a joy unspeakable. As for ordination, what is it, but the laying on of hands, an outward sign or symbol of admission? It creates nothing, it confers nothing; it is the inward calling of God that makes a minister, and his own painful study and diligence that manures and improves his ministerial gifts. In the primitive times, many, before ever they had received ordination from the apostles, had done the church noble service, as Apollos and others. It is but an orderly form of receiving a man already fitted, and committing to him a particular charge; the employment of preaching is as holy, and far more excellent; the care also and judgment to be used in the winning of souls, which is thought to be sufficient in every worthy minister, is an ability above that which is required in ordination: for many may be able to judge who is fit to be made a minister, that would not be found fit to be made ministers themselves; 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 should constitute a superior order in the church to perform an office which is not only every minister's function, but inferior also to that which he has a confessed right to; and why this superiority should remain thus : 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 less skill 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, said the stranger, 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 provision which the lord of the soil allows me in this office is, and that with good reason, tenfold your wages. The gardener smiled and shook his head; but what was determined, I cannot tell you till the end of this parliament. Remonst. If in time you shall see wooden chalices, and wooden priests, thank yourselves. usurped, some wise Epimenides tell us. Now for jurisdiction, this dear saint of the prelates, it will be best to consider, first, what it is: that sovereign Lord, who in the discharge of his holy anointment from God the Father, which made him supreme bishop of our souls, was so humble as to say, "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 instructions, gentle admonitions, and sometimes rounder reproofs: against negligence or obstinacy, will be required a rousing volley of pastorly threatenings; against a persisting stubbornness, or the fear of a reprobate sense, a timely separation from the flock by that interdictive sentence, lest his conversation unprohibited, or unbranded, might breathe a pestilential murrain into the other sheep. In sum, his jurisdiction is to see the thriving and prospering of that which he hath planted what other work the prelates have found for chancellors and suffragans, delegates and officials, with all the hell-pestering rabble of sumners and apparitors, is but an invasion upon the temporal magistrate, and affected by them as men that are not ashamed of the ensign and banner of antichrist. But true evangelical jurisdiction or discipline is no more, as was said, than for a minister to see to the thriving and prospering of that which he hath planted. And which is the worthiest work of these two, to plant as every minister's office is equally with the bishops, or to tend that which is planted, which the blind and undiscerning prelates call jurisdiction, and would appropriate to themselves as a business of higher dignity? Have patience therefore a little, and hear a law case. A certain man of large possessions had a fair garden, and kept therein an honest and laborious servant, whose skill and profession was to set or sow all wholesome herbs, and delightful flowers, according to every season, and whatever else was to be done in a well-husbanded nursery of plants and fruits. Now, when the time was come that he should cut his hedges, prune his trees, look to his tender slips, 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 spent? Yet for all this there comes another strange gardener that never knew the soil, never handled a dibble or spade to set the least potherb that grew there, much less had endured an hour's sweat or chilness, 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 honest gardener, that ever since the day-be, to teach others that godliness with content is great peep, till now the sun was grown somewhat rank, had wrought painfully about his banks and seedplots, at his commanding voice turns suddenly about with some wonder; and although he could have well beteemed to have thanked him of the ease he proffered, yet loving his own bandywork, modestly refused him, telling him withal, that, for his part, if he had thought much of his Answ. It had been happy for this land, if your priests had been but only wooden; all England knows they have been to this island not wood, but wormwood, that have infected the third part of our waters, like that apostate star in the Revelation, that many souls have died of their bitterness; and if you mean by wooden, illiterate or contemptible, there was no want of that sort among you; and their number increasing daily, as their laziness, their tavern-hunting, their neglect of all sound literature, and their liking of doltish and monastical schoolmen daily increased. What, should I tell you how the universities, that men look should be fountains of learning and knowledge, have been poisoned and choaked under your governance? And if to be wooden be to be base, where could there be found among all the reformed churches, nay in the church of Rome itself, a baser brood of flattering and time-serving priests? according as God pronounces by Isaiah, the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. As for your young scholars, that petition for bishoprics and deaneries to encourage them in their studies, and that many gentlemen else will not put their sons to learning; away with such young mercenary striplings, and their simoniacal fathers; God has no need of such, they have no part or lot in his vineyard: they may as well sue for nunneries, that they may have some convenient stowage for their withered daughters, because they cannot give them portions answerable 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 should 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 she shall think to entice men to the pure service of God by the same means that were used to tempt our Saviour to the service of the devil, by laying before him honour and preferment? Fit professors indeed are they like to gain, whenas their godliness of teaching had not been but for worldly gain. The heathen philosophers thought that virtue was for its own sake inestimable, and the greatest gain of a teacher to make a soul virtuous; so Xenophon writes to Socrates, who never bargained with any for teaching them; he feared not lest those who had received so high a benefit from him, would not of their own free will return him all possible | satiate avarice and ambition seem pious and orthodoxal, thanks. Was moral virtue so lovely, and so alluring, by painting his lewd and deceitful principles with a and heathen men so enamoured of her, as to teach smooth and glossy varnish in a doctrinal way, to bring and study her with greatest neglect and contempt of about his wickedest purposes. Instead of the great worldly profit and advancement? And is Christian harm therefore that these men fear upon the dissolving piety so homely and so unpleasant, and Christian of prelates, what an ease and happiness will it be to men so cloyed with her, as that none will study and us, when tempting rewards are taken away, that the teach her, but for lucre and preferment? O stale- cunningest and most dangerous mercenaries will cease grown piety! O gospel rated as cheap as thy Master, of themselves to frequent the fold, whom otherwise at thirty pence, and not worth the study, unless thou scarce all the prayers of the faithful could have kept canst buy those that will sell thee! O race of Ca- back from devouring the flock! But a true pastor of pernaïtans, senseless of divine doctrine, and capable Christ's sending hath this especial mark, that for greatonly of loaves and belly-cheer! But they will grant, est labours and greatest merits in the church, he reperhaps, piety may thrive, but learning will decay: I quires either nothing, if he could so subsist, or a very would fain ask these men at whose hands they seek common and reasonable supply of human necessaries : inferiour things, as wealth, honour, their dainty fare, we cannot therefore do better than to leave this care of their lofty houses? No doubt but they will soon an- ours to God, he can easily send labourers into his harswer, that all these things they seek at God's hands. vest, that shall not cry, Give, give, but be contented Do they think then that all these meaner and super- with a moderate and beseeming allowance; nor will fluous things come from God, and the divine gift of | he suffer true learning to be wanting, where true grace learning from the den of Plutus, or the cave of Mam- and our obedience to him abounds: for if he give us mon? Certainly never any clear spirit nursed up from to know him aright, and to practise this our knowledge brighter influences, with a soul enlarged to the dimen- in right established discipline, how much more will he sions of spacious art and high knowledge, ever entered replenish us with all abilities in tongues and arts, that there but with scorn, and thought it ever foul disdain may conduce to his glory and our good! He can stir to make pelf or ambition the reward of his studies; it up rich fathers to bestow exquisite education upon their being the greatest honour, the greatest fruit and pro- children, and so dedicate them to the service of the ficiency of learned studies to despise these things. Not gospel; he can make the sons of nobles his ministers, liberal science, but illiberal must that needs be, that and princes to be his Nazarites; for certainly there is mounts in contemplation merely for money. And what no employment more honourable, more worthy to take would it avail us to have a hireling clergy, though up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free never so learned? For such can have neither true wis- nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of headom nor grace; and then in vain do men trust in learn- venly truth from God to man, and, by the faithful work ing, where these be wanting. If in less noble and of holy doctrine, to procreate a number of faithful men, almost mechanic arts, according to the definitions of making a kind of creation like to God's, by infusing those authors, he is not esteemed to deserve the name his spirit and likeness into them, to their salvation, as of a complete architect, an excellent painter, or the God did into him; arising to what climate soever he like, that bears not a generous mind above the peasantly turn him, like that Sun of righteousness that sent him, regard of wages and hire; much more must we think with healing in his wings, and new light to break in him a most imperfect and incomplete divine, who is upon the chill and gloomy hearts of his hearers, raising so far from being a contemner of filthy lucre, that his out of darksome barrenness a delicious and fragrant whole divinity is moulded and bred up in the beggarly spring of saving knowledge, and good works. Can a and brutish hopes of a fat prebendary, deanery, or man, thus employed, find himself discontented, or disbishopric; which poor and low-pitched desires, if they honoured for want of admittance to have a pragmatical do but mix with those other heavenly intentions that voice at sessions and jail deliveries? Or because he draw a man to this study, it is justly expected that they may not as a judge sit out the wrangling noise of lishould bring forth a baseborn issue of divinity, like that tigious courts to shrive the purses of unconfessing and of those imperfect and putrid creatures that receive a unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be discrawling life from two most unlike procreants, the sun couraged though men call him not lord, whenas the and mud. And in matters of religion, there is not any due performance of his office would gain him, even from thing more intolerable than a learned fool, or a learned lords and princes, the voluntary title of father? Would hypocrite; the one is ever cooped up at his empty he tug for a barony to sit and vote in parliament, knowspeculations, a sot, an ideot for any use that mankinding that no man can take from him the gift of wisdom can make of him, or else sowing the world with nice and sound doctrine, which leaves him free, though not and idle questions, and with much toil and difficulty to be a member, yet a teacher and persuader of the parwading to his auditors up to the eyebrows in deep shal-liament? And in all wise apprehensions the persuasive lows that wet not the instep: 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 using his sophisticated arts, and bending all his studies how to make his in power in man to win others to goodness by instruction is greater, and more divine, than the compulsive power to restrain men from being evil by terrour of the law; and therefore Christ left Moses to be the lawgiver, but himself came down amongst us to be a teacher, with which office his heavenly wisdom was so well pleased, as that he was angry with those that would have put a piece of temporal judicature into his hands, disclaiming that he had any commission from above for such matters. these places? Not among your beloved Jesuits, nor their favourers, though you take all the prelates into the number, and instance in what kind of learning you please. And how in England all noble sciences attending upon the train of christian doctrine may flourish more than ever; and how the able professors of every art may with ample stipends be honestly provided; and finally, how there may be better care had that their hearers may benefit by them, and all this without the prelates; the courses are so many and so easy, that I shall pass them over. Remonst. It is God that makes the bishop, the king that gives the bishopric; what can you say to this? Answ. What you shall not long stay for: we say it is God that makes a bishop, and the devil that makes him take a prelatical bishopric; as for the king's gift, regal bounty may be excusable in giving, where the bishop's covetousness is damnable in taking. Such a high calling therefore as this, sends not for those drossy spirits that need the lure and whistle of earthly preferment, like those animals that fetch and carry for a morsel; no. She can find such as therefore study her precepts, because she teaches to despise preferment. And let not those wretched fathers think they shall impoverish the church of willing and able supply, though they keep back their sordid sperm, begotten in the lustiness of their avarice, and turn them to their malting kilns; rather let them take heed what lessons they instil into that lump of flesh which they are the cause of; lest, thinking to offer him as a present to God, they dish him out for the devil. Let the novice learn first to renounce the world, and so give himself to God, and not therefore give himself to God, that he may close the better with the world, like that false shepherd Palinode in the eclogue of May, under whom Answ. I cannot blame them, they were not only the poet lively personates our prelates, whose whole life eminent but supereminent divines, and for stomach is a recantation of their pastoral vow, and whose pro-much like to Pompey the Great, that could endure no fession to forsake the world, as they use the matter, bogs them deeper into the world. Those our admired Spenser inveighs against, not without some presage of these reforming times: The time was once and may again return, By all this we may conjecture, how little we need fear that the ungilding of our prelates will prove the woodening of our priests. In the mean while let no man carry in his head either such narrow or such evil eyes, as not to look upon the churches of Belgia and Helvetia, and that envied city Geneva: where in the christian world doth learning more flourish than in Remonst. Many eminent divines of the churches abroad have earnestly wished themselves in our condi tion. equal. Remonst. The Babylonian note sounds well in your ears, "Down with it, down with it, even to the ground." Answ. You mistake the matter, it was the Edomitish note; but change it, and if you be an angel, cry with the angel," It is fallen, it is fallen." Remonst. But the God of heaven will, we hope, vindicate his own ordinance so long perpetuated to his church. Answ. Go rather to your god of this world, and see if he can vindicate your lordships, your temporal and spiritual tyrannies, and all your pelf; for the God of heaven is already come down to vindicate his ordinance from your so long perpetuated usurpation. Remonst. If yet you can blush. Answ. This is a more Edomitish conceit than the former, and must be silenced with a counter quip of the same country. So often and so unsavourily has it been repeated, that the reader may well cry, Down with it, down with it, for shame. A man would think you had eaten over-liberally of Esau's red porridge, and from thence dream continually of blushing; or perhaps, to heighten your fancy in writing, are wont to sit in your doctor's scarlet, which through your eyes infecting your pregnant imaginative with a red suffusion, begets a continual thought of blushing; that you thus persecute ingenuous men over all your book, with this one overtired rubrical conceit still of blushing: but if you have no mercy upon them, yet spare yourself, lest you bejade the good galloway, your own opiniatre wit, and make the very conceit itself blush with spurgalling. Remonst. The scandals of our inferiour ministers I desired to have had less public. Answ. And what your superiour archbishop or bishops! O forbid to have it told in Gath! say you. O dauber! and therefore remove not impieties from Israel. Constantine might have done more justly to have pu |