Quest. LVII. Whether any forms of churches, and church government, or any new church officers, may lawfully be invented and made by man?
Answ. To remove ambiguities, 1. By the word forms may be meant either that relative form of such aggregate bodies which is their essence, and denominateth them essentially; or only some accidental mode which denominateth them but accidentally.
2. By churches is meant either holy societies related by the foundation of a divine institution; or else societies related by accident, or by human contract only.
3. By church government is meant, either that government formally ecclesiastical, which constituteth a church, of Christ’s making; or else some government about the matters of the church, which is formally either magistratical or human, (by contract,) &c.
4. So by church officers are meant, either such as are accounted essential to a church in the pure christian sense; or integral at least (as deacons); or else such as are accounted but accidental to it, and essential only to the human form. And so I answer,
1. As there are some things circa sacra, or accidents of God’s special church worship, which are left to human prudence to determine of, so the same human prudence may determine who shall do them. As, e. g. Who shall repair the buildings of the church; the windows, the bells, the pulpits, the tables, &c.; who shall keep the clock; who shall keep the cups, cloths, and other utensils; who shall be the porter, the keeper of the books, &c.; who shall call the people to church, or ring the bells, or give them notice of church assemblies; who shall make the bread for the sacrament, or provide wine, or bring water for baptism; who shall make the graves, and bury the dead, or attend marriages, or baptizings, &c.; who shall set the tune of the psalm, or use the church music (if there be any); who shall summon any of the people on any just occasion to come to their pastors; or who shall summon the pastors to any synod, or lawful assembly, and give them notice of the time and place; when they are to meet, who shall be called first, and who second; who shall sit highest, and who lowest; who shall take the votes, or moderate or guide the disputations of the assembly; who shall be the scribe, and record what is done; who shall send abroad their agreements, and who shall be the church messenger to carry them. The agents of such circumstantials maybe chosen by the magistrate, or by the churches, or pastors, as is most convenient. Though I doubt not but in the beginning the deacons were mere servants to the pastors, to do as much of such circumstantial work as they were able; of which serving at tables, and looking to the poor, and carrying bread and wine to the absent, &c. were but parts; and all went under the name of ministering to the pastors or churches. And therefore they seem to be such an accidental office, appointed by the apostles, on such common reasons, as magistrates or churches might have appointed them, if they had not.
2. If one will call all or many of these, church officers, and another will not, it is but a strife about names, which one will use more largely and the other more narrowly or strictly.
3. If magistrates by authority, or the churches by agreement, shall distribute the country for conveniency into parishes, (not making all to be church members that dwell in those precincts, but determining that all persons that are fit in those proximities, and they only, shall be members of that particular church,) and then shall denominate the church from this accident of place, it is but what is left to their discretion.
4. And if the said magistrates or churches shall divide a kingdom into provinces, and say, that whereas God commandeth us the use of correspondencies, mutual advice, and synods, for the due help, concord, and communion of churches, and all things must be done in order and to edification; therefore we determine that so many churches shall make up such a synod, and the churches of such a district shall make up another synod, and so shall be specially related to each other for concord as advisers, all this is but the prudent determining of church circumstances or accidents left to man.
5. And if they shall appoint that either a magistrate or one pastor shall be for order’s sake the appointer of the times and places of meeting, or the president of the synod, to regulate and order proceedings, and keep peace, as is aforesaid, it is but an accident of the sacred work which man may determine of. Therefore a layman may be such a president or regulator.
6. And if they will call this man by the name of a church governor, who doth but a common part therein, and from thence will call this association or province by the name of a church, which is but a company of churches associated for concord and counsel, the name maketh it not another thing than it is without that name; and the name may be lawful or unlawful as times and probable consequents make it fit or unfit as to use.
7. So much of church matters as is left to the magistrate’s government, may be under monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, and under such subordinate officers as the supreme ruler shall appoint.
8. And if the magistrate will make assemblies or councils of pastors, to be his councils, and require them frequently to meet to advise him in the performance of his own trust and work about religion and the church, he may accordingly distribute them into provinces for that use, or order such circumstances as he please.
9. And if a province of churches be called one church, because it is under one magistrate, or a nation of churches called a national church, because it is under one king, or many kingdoms or an empire called one catholic church, because they are all under one emperor; it must be confessed that this question is but de nomine, and not de re.
And further, 1. That in sacred things that which is of divine and primary institution is the famosius analogatum, and not that which is but formed by man. 2. That when such an ambiguous word is used without explication or explicating circumstances, it is to be taken for the famosius analogatum. 3. That in this case the word church or church form is certainly ambiguous and not univocal. 4. That a national, imperial, or provincial church as headed by a king, emperor, magistrate, or any head of man’s appointment, is another thing from a church of Christ’s institution; and is but an accident or adjunct of it: and the head of the human form, if called the head of the church of Christ, is but an accidental head, and not constitutive. And if Christ’s churches be denominated from such a head, they are denominated but from an accident, as a man may be denominated clothed or unclothed, clothed gorgeously or sordidly, a neighbour to this man or that, &c. It is no formal denomination of a church in the first acception, as it signifieth the famosius analogatum; though otherwise many kind of societies may be called ecclesiæ or cœtus: but divines should not love confusion.
10. It seemeth to me that the first distribution of churches in the Roman empire, into patriarchal, primates, metropolitical, provincial, diocesan, were only the determination of such adjuncts or extrinsic things, partly by the emperors, and partly by the church’s consent upon the emperor’s permission; and so that these new church governments were partly magistratical, or by power derived from the emperors, and partly mere agreements or contracts by degrees degenerating into governments; and so the new forms and names are all but accidental, of adjuncts of the true christian churches. And though I cannot prove it unlawful to make such adjunctive or extrinsic constitutions, forms, and names, considering the matter simply itself, yet by accident these accidents have proved such to the true churches, as the accident of sickness is to the body, and have been the causes of the divisions, wars, rebellions, ruins, and confusions of the christian world. 1. As they have served the covetousness and ambition of carnal men. 2. And have enabled them to oppress simplicity and sincerity. 3. And because princes have not exercised their own power themselves, nor committed it to lay officers, but to churchmen. 4. Whereby the extrinsic government hath so degenerated, and obscured the intrinsic, and been confounded with it, that both going under the equivocal name of ecclesiastical government, few churches have had the happiness to see them practically distinct. Nay, few divines do clearly in their controversy distinguish them. (Though Marsilius Patavinus and some few more have formerly given them very fair light, yet hath it been but slenderly improved.)
11. There seemeth to me no readier and directer way, to reduce the churches to holy concord, and true reformation, than for the princes and magistrates who are the extrinsic rulers, to re-assume their own, and to distinguish openly and practically between the properly priestly or pastoral intrinsic office, and their extrinsic part, and to strip the pastors of all that is not intrinsically their own (it being enough for them, and things so heterogeneous not well consisting in one person): and then when the people know what is claimed as from the magistrate only, it will take off most of their scruples as to subjection and consent.
12. No mortal man may abrogate or take down the pastoral office, and the intrinsic, real power thereof, and the church form which is constituted thereby; seeing God hath instituted them for perpetuity on earth.
13. But whether one church shall have one pastor or many is not at all of the form of a particular church; but it is of the integrity or gradual perfection of such churches as need many, to have many, and to others not so: not that it is left merely to the will of man, but it is to be varied as natural necessity and cause requireth.
14. The nature of the intrinsic office or power (anon to be described) is most necessary to be understood as distinct from the power of magistrates, by them that would truly understand this. The number of governors in a civil state make that which is called a variety of forms of commonwealths, monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy: because commanding power is the thing which is there most notably exercised, and primarily magnified. And a wiser and better man, yea, a thousand, must stand by as subjects, for want of authority or true power; which can be but in one supreme, either natural or political person; because it cannot consist in the exercise with self-contradiction. If one be for war, and another for peace, &c. there is no rule. Therefore the many must be one collective or political person, and must consent or go by the major vote, or they cannot govern. But that which is called government in priests or ministers, is of another nature; it is but a secondary subservient branch of their office: the first parts are teaching and guiding the people, as their priests, to God in public worship: and they govern them by teaching, and in order to further teaching and worshipping God; and that not by might, but by reason and love. Of which more anon. Therefore if a sacred congregation be taught and conducted in public worship, and so governed as conduceth hereunto, whether by one, two, or many, it no more altereth the form of the church, than it doth the form of a school, when a small one hath one schoolmaster, and a great one four: or of an hospital, when a small one hath one physician, and a great one many; seeing that teaching in the one, and healing in the other, is the main denominating work, to which government is but subservient in the most notable acts of it.
15. No mortal man may take on him to make another church, or another office for the church, as a divine thing, on the same grounds, and of the same nature pretendedly as Christ hath made those already made. The case of adding new church officers or forms of churches, is the same with that of making new worship ordinances for God, and accordingly to be determined (which I have largely opened in its place). Accidents may be added. Substantials of like pretended nature may not be added; because it is a usurping of Christ’s power, without derivation by any proved commission; and an accusing of him, as having done his own work imperfectly.
16. Indeed no man can here make a new church officer of this intrinsic sort, without making him new work, which is to make new doctrine, or new worship (which are forbidden): for to do God’s work already made belongs to the office already instituted. If every king will make his own officers, or authorize the greater to make the less, none must presume to make Christ officers and churches without his commission.
17. No man must make any office, church, or ordinance, which is corruptive or destructive, or contrary or injurious to the offices, churches, and ordinances which Christ himself hath made. This Bellarmin confesseth, and therefore I suppose protestants will not deny it. Those human officers which usurp the work of Christ’s own officers, and take it out of their hands, do malignantly fight against Christ’s institutions: and while they pretend that it is but preserving and not corrupting or opposing additions which they make, and yet with these words in their mouths, do either give Christ’s officers’ work to others, or hinder and oppress his officers themselves, and by their new church forms undermine or openly destroy the old, by this expression of their enmity they confute themselves.
18. This hath been the unhappy case of the Roman frame of church innovations, as you may observe in the particulars of its degeneracy.
(1.) Councils were called general or œcumenical in respect to one empire only; and they thence grew to extend the name to the whole world; when they may as well say, that Constantine, Martian, &c. were emperors of the whole world, seeing by their authority they were called.
(2.) These councils at first were the emperor’s councils called to direct him what to settle in church orders by his own power; but they were turned to claim an imposing authority of their own to command the churches as by commission from God.
(3.) These councils at first were only for counsel, or for agreement by way of contract or mutual consent to the particular bishops; but they degenerated into a form of government, and claimed a ruling and commanding power.
(4.) The patriarchs, primates and metropolitans, at first claimed but a power about circumstantials extrinsical to the pastoral office, such as is the timing and placing of councils, the sitting above others, &c. And the exercise of some part of the magistrate’s power committed to them, that is, the deposing of other bishops or pastors from their station of such liberty and countenance as the magistrate may grant or deny as there is cause. But in time they degenerated to claim the spiritual power of the keys, over the other bishops, in point of ordination, excommunication, absolution.
(5.) These patriarchs, primates, and metropolitans, at first claimed their extrinsic power but from man, that is, either the consent and agreement of the churches, or the grant of the emperors: but in time they grew to claim it as of divine or apostolical appointment, and as unalterable.
(6.) At first they were taken only for adjuncts, ornaments, supports, or conveniences to the churches: but afterwards they pretended to be integral parts of the church universal, and at last the pope would needs be an essential part; and his cardinals must claim the power of the church universal in being the choosers of a universal head, or a king priest and teacher for all the christians of the world.
(7.) At first laymen (now called chancellors, &c.) were only the bishops’ counsellors, or officers to the magistrate or them, in performing the extrinsical work about church adjuncts, which a layman might do: but at last they came to exercise the intrinsic power of the keys in excommunications and absolutions, &c.
(8.) At first a number of particular churches consociated with their several bishops, were taken to be a community or company of true churches prudentially cantonized or distributed and consociated for concord; but after they grew to be esteemed proper political societies, or churches of divine appointment, if not the ecclesia minimæ, having turned the particular churches into oratories or chapels, destroying Ignatius’s character of one church, To every church there is one altar, and one bishop with his presbyters and deacons. Abundance more such instances may be given.
Object. Wherever we find the notion of a church particular, there must be government in that church; and why a national society incorporated into one civil government, joining into the profession of christianity, and having a right thereby to participate of gospel ordinances, in the convenient distributions of them in the particular congregations, should not be called a church, I confess I can see no reason.
Answ. 1. Here observe, that the question is only of the name, (whether it may be called a church,) and not of the thing (whether all the churches in a kingdom may be under one king, which no sober man denieth).
2. Names are at men’s disposal much; but I confess I had rather the name had been used no otherwise, or for no other societies, than Scripture useth it. My reasons are, (1.) Because when Christ hath appropriated or specially applied one name to the sacred societies of his institution, it seemeth somewhat bold to make that name common to other societies. (2.) Because it tendeth to confusion, misunderstanding, and to cherish errors and controversies in the churches, when all names shall be made common or ambiguous, and holy things shall not be allowed any name proper to themselves, nor any thing can be known by a bare name without a description. If the name of Christ himself should be used of every anointed king, it would seem not a little thus injurious to him. If the name, Bible, Scripture, preachers, &c. be made common to all that the notation of the names may extend to, it will introduce the aforesaid inconveniences; so how shall we in common talk distinguish between sacred societies of divine institution and of human if you will allow us no peculiar name, but make that common which Christ hath chosen?
3. And that the name is here used equivocally is manifest. For the body political is informed and denominated from the pars imperans, the governing part or head: therefore as a head of divine institution, authorized for the spiritual or pastoral work, denominateth the society accordingly; so a civil head can make but a civil society, and a head of man’s making, but a human society. It is certain that Christ hath appointed the episcopal or pastoral office, and their work, and consequently episcopal or pastoral churches; and it is certain that a king is no constitutive part of one of these churches, but accidental; and therefore that he is an accidental head to a pastoral church as such, to which the pastor is essential.
Therefore if you will needs call both these societies churches, you must distinguish them into pastoral churches, and regal churches, or magistratical churches; for the word national, notifieth not the government which is the constitutive part; and may be used of consociated churches, though under many civil governors (as in the Saxon Heptarchy).
So that our question is much like this, Whether all the grammar schools in England as under one king may be called one national school? Answ. Not without unfitness, and inconveniences; but rather than breed any quarrel, they may call them so that please: but, 1. They must confess that a particular school is the famosius significatum. 2. That the king is king of schools, but not a schoolmaster, nor a constitutive part of a school. 3. That if you will needs denominate them from the regent part, as one, you must call them all one royal school, if you will leave the well-known sense of words for such uncouth phrases. But give us leave to call the body which is essentiated by a king, by the name of a kingdom only, though it have in it many schools, academies, colleges, cities, churches, which they that please may call all one royal school, academy, college, city, and church, if they love confusion.
4. Christianity giveth men right to communion in particular churches, when they also make known their christianity to the bishops of those churches, and are received (as stated or transient) members by mutual consent; but not otherwise; nor doth mere regal government give any subject right to church communion, except by a church you mean a kingdom.
Object. A particular church then I would describe thus, It is a society of men joined together in the visible profession of the true faith, having a right to, and enjoying among them, the ordinances of the gospel.
Answ. 1. When you tell us by your description what you will mean by a particular church, we may understand your denomination; but yet while it is unusual, you must not expect that other men so use the word. Had you called your description a definition, I would have asked you, 1. Whether by a society, you mean not strictly a political society constituted by a pars gubernans, et gubernata? If not, it is no church save equivocally. If so, should not the pars regens which is constitutive have been put in? If private men join together, &c. it makes but a community. 2. A right to gospel ordinances is supposed, but need not be in the definition. 3. The enjoying of them, is not essential to a church. The relation may continue, when the enjoyment is a long time hindered. 4. Among them is a very ambiguous word; is it among them in the same place; or in the same country or kingdom; or in the same world? If you difference and define them not, by relation to the same bishops or pastors, and by intended personal holy communion, your description confoundeth the universal church, as well as the national, with a particular church; for the whole christian world, is a society of men joining together in the visible profession of the true faith, having a right to, and enjoying among them, the ordinances of the gospel.
Object. A nation joining in the profession of christianity is a true church of God; whence it evidently followeth, that there must be a form of ecclesiastical government over a nation as a church, as well as of civil government over it, as a society governed by the same laws. — For every society must have its government belonging to it as such a society; and the same reason that makes government necessary in any particular congregation, will make it necessary for all the particular congregations, joining together in one visible society, as a particular national church, for the unity and peace of that church ought much more to be looked after than any one particular congregation, &c.
Answ. 1. From one absurdity many follow: our controversy before was but of the name: if an accidental royal or civil head may equivocally denominate an ecclesiastical society, and we grant you the use of an equivocal name, (or rather the abuse,) you will grow too hard upon us, if thence you will gather a necessity of a real ecclesiastical policy, besides the civil. Names abused infer not the things signified by an univocal term.
2. You must first prove the form of government, and thence infer the denomination, and not, contrarily, first beg the name, and then infer the government.
3. If yet by a form of ecclesiastical government, you meant nothing but the king’s extrinsic government, which you may as well call also a form of school government, of college government, &c. we would grant you all. But if I can understand you, you now speak of ecclesiastical government as distinct from that. And then,
4. You are now grown up from a may be, to a must be, and necessity; and a greater necessity of one national ecclesiastical government, than of a particular church government; which being undeniably of Christ’s institution, (by the Holy Ghost in the apostles,) you do not make all forms to be indifferent, or deny this to be jure divino. What! necessary and more necessary than that which is jure divino, and yet indifferent and not jure divino? If you say, It is necessary only on supposition that there be a national church: I answer, But your reasons evidently infer that it is also necessary that there be such a national church where it may be had; though you deny the necessity of monarchical government by one high priest in it. But I know you call not this a form of government, unless as determinately managed by one, many or most. But why a national spiritual policy as distinct from congregational, may not be called a form of government, as well as one man is distinct from two, over the same people, I see not: but this is at your liberty. But your necessity of such a national regimen is a matter of greater moment.
In these three senses I confess a national church. 1. As all the christians in a nation are under one civil church governor. 2. As they are consociated for concord, and meet in synods or hold correspondences. 3. As they are all a part of the universal church, cohabiting in one nation. But all these are equivocal uses of the word church; the denomination being taken in the first from an accident; in the second the name of a policy being given to a community agreeing for concord; in the third the name of the whole is given to a small integral part.
But the necessity of any other church, headed by your ecclesiastical, national governor, personal or collective, monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical, I utterly deny, and find not a word of proof which I think I have any need to furnish the reader with an answer to.
5. And your judgment in this is downright against the constitution, canons, and judgment of the national church of England; for that they use the word in the senses allowed by me, and not in yours, is proved, (1.) From the visible constitution, in which there is (besides the king) no distinct ecclesiastical head. For the archbishop of Canterbury is not the proper governor of the archbishop of York and his province.
(2.) From the canons. Can. cxxxix. “A national synod is the church representative; whosoever shall affirm that the sacred synod of this nation, in the name of Christ and by the king’s authority assembled, is not the true church of England by representation, let him be excommunicated,” &c. So that the synod is but the representative church; and therefore not the political head of the church: whether it be the laity, or the whole clergy, or both, which they represent, representation of those that are no national head, maketh them not a national head.
(3.) From the ordinary judgment of episcopal divines, (maintained by Bishop Bilson and many others at large, against the papists,) that all bishops jure divino are equal and independent, further than human laws, or agreements, or difference of gifts may difference them, or as they are bound to consociation for concord.
6. How shall I deny not only the lawfulness, but the necessity of such a papacy as really was in the Roman empire, on your grounds? I have proved against W. Johnson that the pope was then actually but the head of the imperial churches, and not of all the world. And if there must be one national ecclesiastical head under one king, why not one also in one empire? Or whether it be one monarch, or a collective person, it is still one political person which is now in question. (Either a ruling pope, or a ruling aristocracy or democracy, which is not the great matter in controversy.)
7. And why will not the same argument carry it also, for one universal visible head of all the churches in the world? at least as lawful? at least as far as human capacity and converse will allow? And who shall choose this universal head? And who can lay so fair a claim to it as the pope? And if the form be indifferent, why may not the churches, by consent at least, set up one man as well as many? Whether you carry it to an imperial church, or a papal, to a patriarchal, or provincial, or national, till you have proved it to be of divine institution, (and particular churches to be unnecessary, alterable, and of human institution,) I shall never grant you that it is to be preferred before that which is unquestionably of God. For though I easily grant that all the churches of a nation, empire, or the world, are to be more esteemed and carefully preserved, than one bishop’s or pastor’s particular church; yet I will not grant you that your human policy is more necessary to the safety of all these churches than the divine. For the safety of these churches may be better preserved by God’s three great means, (1. The polity of particular churches with the conduct of their present faithful bishops or pastors. 2. The loving consociation of neighbour churches for concord. 3. The protection and countenance of magistrates,) without any new church form, (or national, or imperial, or universal pastor,) than with it.
Nay, when that sort of usurpation hath been the very engine of dividing, corrupting, and undoing the christian churches above a thousand years, we are not easily persuaded now, that it is yet either necessary or desirable.
8. But the best and easiest way to discern how far the making new churches or church offices is lawful or unlawful, is by trying it by the quality of their office work. For it is the work which giveth us the description of the office; and the office of the ruling part, which giveth us the definition of the church, which that office constituteth.
The work which the new human officer is to do, is either, 1. The same which God hath already appointed bishops or pastors to do, or at least the unfixed ministers in the universal church. 2. Or it is such as he hath appointed magistrates to do. 3. Or it is such as belongeth to private and laymen. 4. Or it is somewhat different from all these.
1. If it be of the first sort, it is a contradiction. For men that are by office appointed to do the same work which ministers are already appointed to do, are not a new office, but ministers indeed, such as Christ hath instituted: for the office is nothing but an obligation and authority to do the work.
2. If it be the same work which belongeth to the magistrate, then it is no new office, for they are magistrates.
3. If it be that which belongeth to private men, by God’s appointment, they cannot disoblige themselves by transferring it to a new officer.
4. If it be none of all these, what is it? I doubt it may prove some needless or rather sinful work, which God committed to none of these three sorts, and therefore unfit to make a church office of. Unless it be such as I before described and granted. (1.) I confess that the magistrate may make new inferior officers, to do his own part (as church justices, churchwardens, &c.) (2.) I grant that the people may make an office for the better doing of some parts of their own work: they may make collectors, door-keepers, artists by office, to keep the clock, and bells, and church buildings, &c. if the magistrates leave it to them.
(3.) I grant that the bishops or pastors may do some circumstances of their work by human officers; as to facilitate their concord in synods, by choosing one to preside, to choose time and place, to send messengers to take votes, to moderate disputes, to record agreements, &c. as aforesaid; and these circumstantials are the things that officers may be made for.
But the very modes and circumstances which are part of the work to which every bishop or pastor is obliged, he cannot commit to another; as to choose his text, subject, method, words, &c. These are parts of his own work; though concord in these is the work of many.
Now what is the work besides all these that we must have new churches and offices made for? Is it to govern all these bishops and churches? How? By the word or by the sword? If by the sword, the magistrate is to do it; if by the word, (or spiritual authority,) either God hath made such an office as archbishops or general bishops over many, or he hath not: if he have, we need no new human office for it, God having provided for it already; if not, but God hath left all bishops independent, and to learn of one another, as equal in office, and unequal only in gifts, then either such an office is fit and necessary, or not. If it be, you accuse God of omission in not appointing a bishop over bishops as well as a bishop of the lowest order. If not, then by what reason or power will you make new needless officers in the church? when Cyprian and his Carthage council so vehemently disclaimed being Episcopi Episcoporum?
19. I would fain know whether those new-made churches of human and not of divine fabrication, (whether universal, (or papal,) patriarchal, provincial, &c.) were made by former churches, or by no churches. If by no churches, then either by other societies or by single persons: if by other societies, by what power do they make new churches to Christ, who are themselves no churches? If by single persons, either they are before church members, or not; if not, how can those make new churches that be not so much as members of churches, without a commission from Christ? But if either former churches or their members made these new churches, then, (1.) It followeth that there were another sort of churches before these new or human churches. And if so, either those other that made these were themselves made of God or not. And so the question will run up till you bring it either to some church of God’s making which made these other, or some person commissioned to do it. If you say the first, then he that will confess that there is a species of churches of Christ’s institution, and a species not of his institution, must prefer the former, and must well prove the power of making the latter. And so they must do, if they say that it was done by particular persons that were no particular church members. For if Christ commissioned them to settle any one species of churches, those are to be esteemed settled by Christ. (2.) But if you say that Christ left them to vary the species of churches as they saw cause, and so on to the end of the world, 1. You must well prove it. 2. It is before disproved (unless you take the word church equivocally).
20. Lastly, all christians are satisfied of Christ’s authority; and therefore in that they can agree: but so they are not of any human church maker’s authority; and therefore in that there will never be an agreement: therefore such new churches, and ecclesiastical governments, will be but (as they ever have been) the engines of division and ruin in the churches; and the species of God’s making, with the mutability of mutable adjuncts and circumstances, will best preserve the church’s peace.
But if the true nature of pastoral or ecclesiastical government were well understood, it would put an end to all these controversies. Which may be mostly gathered from what is said before. To which I will add this little following.
Quest. Wherein consisteth the true nature of pastoral church government?
Answ. 1. Not in any use of the sword, or corporal force.
2. Not in a power to contradict God’s word.
3. Not in a power co-ordinate with Christ’s, to do his proper work, or that which hath the same grounds, reasons, and nature.
4. Not in an unquestionable empire, to command things which none must presume to examine, or judge of by a discerning judgment, whether they be forbidden by God or not.
5. Not now in making a new word of God, or new articles of faith, or new universal laws, for the whole church.
6. Not in any thing which derogates from the true power of magistrates, or parents, or masters.
But, 1. It is a ministerial power, of a messenger or servant, who hath a commission to deliver his master’s commands and exhortations.
2. As it is over the laity or flocks, it is a power in the sacred assemblies to teach the people by office, and to be their priests or guides in holy worship; and to rule the worship actions for the time, length, method, and orderly performance of them.
3. As to particular persons, it is the power of the church keys, which is, 1. To judge who is meet to be by baptism taken into the church. 2. To reprove, exhort, and instruct those that by vice or ignorance, in order to repentance, or knowledge, or confirmation, do need the pastoral help. 3. To judge who is to be forbidden church communion as impenitent; or at least, with whom that church must be forbidden to communicate. 4. To judge who is meet for absolution as a penitent. 5. To deliver men personally a sealed pardon from Christ in his two sacraments. 6. To visit the sick, and comfort the sad, and resolve the doubting, and help the poor. This is the true church government, which is like a philosopher’s or schoolmaster’s in his school among volunteers, supposing them to have no power of the rod or violence, but only to take in or put out of their schools: and what need is there of a universal, patriarchal, or national head, to do any of this work, which is but the government of a personal teacher and conductor; and which worketh only on the conscience?
4. But besides this there is a necessity of agreeing in the right management of this work; which needeth no new head, but only the consultations of the several bishops or pastors, and the magistrate’s civil rule, or extrinsic episcopacy (as Constantine called it).
5. And besides this there is need to ordain pastors and bishops in the church. And this is not done by any force neither; but, 1. By judging what men are fit; 2. By persuading the people to consent and receive them; and, 3. By investing them by a delivery of possession by the imposition of hands. Now for all this, there needs no human species of bishops or churches to be made.
6. Besides this there is need of some oversight of these pastors and ministers and fixed bishops when they are made; and of some general care of pastors and people, if they decline to heresies, errors, vices, or lukewarmness: but for this, 1. When magistrates have done their part; 2. And neighbour ministers to one another; 3. And the consociated bishops to the particular ones; 4. And unfixed ministers have done their parts in the places where occasionally they come; if moreover any general pastors or archbishops are necessary, to rebuke, direct, and persuade the bishops or their flocks, by messengers, epistles, or in presence, no doubt but God hath appointed such as the successors of the apostles, evangelists, and other general ministers of those first times. But if no such thing be appointed by Christ, we may be sure it is not necessary nor best.
If it were but considered that the ruling power in the church is so inseparable from the teaching power, that it is exercised by teaching and only by God’s word, (either generally or personally applied,) and that upon none but those that willingly and by consent receive it, it would quiet the world about these matters. And oh that once magistrates would take the sword wholly to themselves, and leave church power to work only by its proper strength and virtue, and then all things would fall into joint again; though the Ithacians would be displeased.
Which tempteth the Erastians to deny and pull down both together, because they find one in the pastor’s hands which belongeth to the magistrate, and we do not teach them to untwist and separate them.
1 Cor. iv. 1, 2.
1 Pet. v. 1-3; Matt, xxviii. 19, 20.
1 Thess. v. 12, 13.
2 Tim. iv. 1-3, 5.