Should not he rather now by his own prescribed Discipline have cast his line and level upon the Soul of Man, which is his rational temple, and, by the divine square and compass thereof, form and regenerate in us the lovely shapes of virtues and graces, the sooner to edify and accomplish that immortal stature of Christ's Body, which is his Church, in all her glorious lineaments and proportions? And that this indeed God hath done for us in the Gospel we shall see with open eyes not under a veil. We may pass over the history of the Acts and other places, turning only to those epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, where the spiritual / eye may discern, more goodly and gracefully erected than all the magnificence of temple or tabernacle, such a heavenly structure of Evangelical Discipline, so diffusive of knowledge and charity to the prosperous increase and growth of the Church, that it cannot be wondered if that elegant and artful symmetry of the promised new temple in Ezekiel, and all those sumptuous things under the law, were made to signify the inward beauty and splendour of the Christian Church thus governed. And whether this be commanded, let it now be judged. St. Paul, after his preface to the first of Timothy, which he concludes in the 17th verse with Amen, enters upon the subject of this epistle, which is to establish the Church Government, with a command: “This charge I commit to thee, son Timothy; according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare." Which is plain enough thus expounded: This charge I commit to thee, wherein I now go about to instruct thee how thou shalt set up Church Discipline, that thou mightest war a good warfare, bearing thyself constantly and faithfully in the ministry, which, in the first to the Corinthians, is also called a warfare. And so, after a kind of parenthesis concerning Hymenæus, he returns to his command, though under the mild word of exhorting, chap. ii. ver. 1, "I exhort therefore;" as if he had interrupted his former command by the occasional mention of Hymenæus. More beneath in the 14th verse of the third chapter, when he had delivered the duties of bishops or presbyters, and deacons, not once naming any other order in the church, he thus adds:

These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly;—such necessity it seems there was ;-but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House of God." From this place it may be justly asked, Whether Timothy, by this here written, might know what was to be known concerning the orders of Church Governors or no? If he might, -then, in such a clear text as this, may we know too without further jangle. If he might not, then did St. Paul write insufficiently, and moreover said not true, for he saith here he might know; and I persuade myself he did know ere this was written, but that the apostle had more regard to the instruction of us than to the informing of him. In the fifth chapter, after some other Church-precepts concerning Discipline, mark what a dreadful command follows, ver. 21: "I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things." And as if all were not yet sure enough, he closes up the epistle with an adjuring charge thus: "I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, that thou keep this commandment:" that is, the old commandment concerning Discipline, being the main purpose of the epistle although Hooker would fain have this denouncement referred to the particular precept going before, because the word commandment is in the singular number, not remembering that even in the first chapter of this epistle the word commandment is used in a plural sense, ver. 5: "Now the end of the commandment is charity;" and what more frequent than in like manner to say the law of Moses? So that either to restrain the significance too much, or too much to enlarge it, would make the adjuration either not so weighty or not so pertinent. And thus we find here that the rules of Church Discipline are not only commanded, but hedged about with such a terrible impalement of commands, as he that will break through wilfully to violate the least of them must hazard the wounding of his conscience even unto death. Yet all this notwithstanding, we shall find them broken well-nigh all by the fair pretenders of the next ages; no less to the contempt of him whom they feign to be the archfounder

of prelaty, St. Peter, who, by what he writes in the fifth chapter of his first epistle, should seem to be far another man than tradition reports him. There he commits to the presbyters only full authority both of feeding the flock and episcopating, and commands that obedience be given to them as to the mighty hand of God, which is his mighty ordinance. Yet all this was as nothing to repel the venturous boldness of innovation that ensued, changing the decrees of God that are immutable, as if they had been breathed by man. Nevertheless, when Christ, by these visions of St. John, foreshews the Reformation of his Church, he bids him take his reed and mete it out again after the first pattern, for he prescribes no other. "Arise," said the angel, "and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein." What is there in the world can measure men but Discipline? Our word ruling imports no less. Doctrine indeed is the measure, or at least the reason of the measure, it is true; but unless the measure be applied to that which it is to measure, how can it actually do its proper work? Whether therefore Discipline be all one with Doctrine, or the particular application thereof to this or that person, we all agree that Doctrine must be such only as is commanded; or whether it be something really differing from Doctrine, yet was it only of God's appointment, as being the most adequate measure of the Church and her children, which is here the office of a great evangelist, and the reed given him from heaven. But that part of the temple which is not thus measured, so far is it from being in God's tuition or delight, that in the following verse he rejects it; however in show and visibility it may seem a part of His Church, yet inasmuch as it lies thus unmeasured, he leaves it to be trampled by the Gentiles, that is, to be polluted with idolatrous and gentilish rites and ceremonies. And that the principal Reformation here foretold is already come to pass, as well in Discipline as in Doctrine, the state of our neighbour Churches affords us to behold. Thus, through all the periods and changes of the Church, it hath been proved, that God hath still. reserved to himself the right of enacting Church Government.

CHAPTER III.

That it is dangerous and unworthy the Gospel, to hold that Church Government is to be patterned by the Law, as Bishop Andrewes and the Primate of Armagh maintain.

WE may return now from this interposing difficulty thus removed to affirm, that since Church Government is so strictly commanded in God's word, the first and greatest Reason why we should submit thereto is, because God hath so commanded.] But whether of these two, prelaty or presbytery, can prove itself to be supported by this first and greatest Reason, must be the next dispute ; wherein this position is to be first laid down as granted, that I may not follow a chase rather than an argument, that one of these two, and none other, is of God's ordaining; and if it be, that ordinance must be evident in the Gospel. For the imperfect and obscure institution of the Law, which the Apostles themselves doubt not ofttimes to vilify, cannot give rules to the complete and glorious ministration of the Gospel, which looks on the Law as on a child, not as on a tutor. And that the prelates have no sure foundation in the Gospel, their own guiltiness doth manifest; they would not else run questing up as high as Adam to fetch their original, as it is said one of them lately did in public. To which assertion, had I heard it, because I see they are so insatiable of antiquity, I should have gladly assented, and confessed them yet more ancient : for Lucifer, before Adam, was the first prelate angel; and both he, as is commonly thought, and our forefather Adam, as we all know, for aspiring above their orders, were miserably degraded. But others, better advised, are content to receive their beginning from Aaron and his sons, among whom bishop Andrewes of late years, and in these times the primate of Armagh, for their learning are reputed the best able to say what may be said in this opinion. The primate, in his discourse about the original of episcopacy newly revised, begins thus: "The ground of episcopacy is fetched partly from the pattern prescribed by God in the Old Testament,

and partly from the imitation thereof brought in by the Apostles." Herein I must entreat to be excused of the desire I have to be satisfied, how, for example, the ground of episcopacy is fetched partly from the example of the Old Testament, by whom next, and by whose authority. Secondly, how the Church Government under the Gospel can be rightly called an imitation of that in the Old Testament; for that the Gospel is the end and fulfilling of the Law, our liberty also from the bondage of the Law, I plainly read. How then the ripe age of the Gospel should be put to school again, and learn to govern herself from the infancy of the Law, the stronger to imitate the weaker, the freeman to follow the captive, the learned to be lessoned by the rude,—will be a hard undertaking to evince from any of those principles which either art or inspiration hath written. If anything done by the Apostles may be drawn howsoever to a likeness of something Mosaical, if it cannot be proved that it was done of purpose in imitation, as having the right thereof grounded in nature and not in ceremony or type, it will little avail the matter. The whole Judaic Law is either political—and to take pattern by that, no Christian nation ever thought itself obliged in conscience-or moral, which contains in it the observation of whatsoever is substantially and perpetually true and good, either in religion or course of life. That which is thus moral, besides what we fetch from those unwritten laws and ideas which nature hath engraven in us, the Gospel, as stands with her dignity most, lectures to her from her own authentic handwriting and command, not copies out from the borrowed manuscript of a subservient scroll, by way of imitating: as well might she be said, in her sacrament of water, to imitate the baptism of John. What though she retain excommunication used in the synagogue, retain the morality of the sabbath. She does not therefore imitate the Law, her underling, but perfect her. All that was morally delivered from the Law to the Gospel, in the office of the priests and Levites, was, that there should be a ministry set apart to teach and discipline the Church), both which duties the Apostles thought good to commit to the presbyters. And if any distinction of honour were to be made among them,

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