as well as old coins, and his much lamented monasteries, for antiquity's sake. He writes in his description of Scotland, that over all the world bishops had no certain diocese till pope Dionysius about the year 268 did cut them out; and that the bishops of Scotland executed their function in what place soever they came indifferently and without distinction, till King Malcolm the Third, about the year 1070." Whence may be guessed what their function was. Was it to go about circled with a band of rooking officials with cloakbags full of citations, and processes to be served 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 exercise any such function indifferently wherever he came. And verily some such matter it was as want of a fat diocese that kept our Britain bishops so poor in the primitive times, that being called to the Council of Rimini in the year 359, they had not wherewithal to defray the charges of their journey, but were fed and lodged upon the emperor's cost; which must needs be no accidental but usual poverty in them: for the author, Sulpitius Severus, in his 2nd book of Church History, praises them, and avouches it praiseworthy in a bishop to be so poor as to have nothing of his own. But to return to the ancient election of bishops: that it could not lawfully be without the consent of the people is so express in Cyprian, and so often to be met with, that to cite each place at large were to translate a good part of the volume; therefore touching the chief passages, I refer the rest to whom so list peruse the author himself. In the 24th epistle, "If a bishop," saith 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 bishop is made by the suffrage of all the people in peace." In the 68th, mark but what he says: "The people chiefly hath power either of choosing worthy ones, or refusing unworthy." This he there proves by authorities out of the Old and New Testament, and with solid reasons: these were his antiquities.

This voice of the people, to be had ever in episcopal elections, was so well known before Cyprian's time, even to those that were without the church, that the emperor Alexander Severus desired to have his governors of provinces chosen in the same manner, as Lampridius can tell; so little thought he it offensive to monarchy. And if single authorities persuade not, hearken. what the whole General Council of Nicæa, the first and famousest of all the rest, determines, writing a synodical epistle to the African churches, to warn them of Arianism. It exhorts them to choose orthodox bishops in the place of the dead, so they be worthy and the people choose them; whereby they seem to make the people's assent so necessary, that merit without their free choice were not sufficient to make a bishop. What would ye say now, grave fathers, if you should wake and see unworthy bishops, or rather no bishops but Egyptian taskmasters of ceremonies, thrust purposely upon the groaning Church, to the affliction and vexation of God's people? It was not of old that a conspiracy of bishops could frustrate and fob off the right of the people ; for we may read how St. Martin, soon after Constantine, was made bishop of Tours in France, by the people's consent from all places thereabout, maugre all the opposition 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, whose reign fell near the 1000th year of our Lord, having done many things tyrannically, is said by Cedrenus to have done nothing more grievous and displeasing to the people, than to have enacted that no bishop should be chosen without his will; so long did this right remain to the people in the midst of other palpable corruptions. Now for episcopal dignity,—what it was, see out of Ignatius, who, in his epistle to those of Trallis, confesseth, that "the presbyters are his fellowcounsellors and fellow-benchers." And Cyprian in many places, as in the 6th, 41st, 52nd epistles, speaking of presbyters, calls them his compresbyters, as if he deemed himself no other, whenas by the same place it appears he was a bishop. He calls them brethren, but that will be thought his meekness; yea, but the

presbyters and deacons writing to him think they do him honour enough, when they phrase him no higher than brother Cyprian, and dear Cyprian, in the 26th epistle. For their authority,—it is evident not to have been single, but depending on the counsel of the presbyters, as from Ignatius was erewhile alleged; and the same Cyprian acknowledges as much in the 6th epistle, and adds thereto, that he had determined, from his entrance into the office of bishop, to do nothing without the consent of his people; and so in the 31st epistle, for it were tedious to course through all his writings, which are so full of the like assertions, insomuch that even in the womb and centre of apostasy, Rome itself, there yet remains a glimpse of this truth. For the pope himself, as a learned English writer notes well, performeth all ecclesiastical jurisdiction as in consistory 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 sinew of the mystical body. But now the gravest and worthiest minister, a true bishop of his fold, shall be reviled and ruffled by an insulting and only canon-wise prelate, as if he were some slight paltry companion; and the people of God, redeemed and washed with Christ's blood, and dignified with so many glorious titles of saints and sons in the Gospel, are now no better reputed than impure ethnics and lay dogs. Stones, and pillars, and crucifixes have now the honour and the alms due to Christ's living members. The table of Communion, now become a table of separation, stands like an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with bulwark and barricado to keep off the profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammock the sacramental bread as familiarly as his tavern biscuit. And thus the people, vilified and rejected by them, give over the earnest study of virtue and godliness, as a thing of greater purity than they need, and the search of divine knowledge as a mystery too high for their capacities, and only for churchmen to meddle with: which is what the prelates desire, that when they have brought us back to popish blindness, we might commit to their dispose the whole

managing of our salvation; for they think it was never fair world with them since that time. But he that will mould a Modern bishop into a Primitive, must yield him to be elected by the popular voice, undiocesed, unrevenued, unlorded, and leave him nothing but brotherly equality, matchless temperance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer and preaching, continual watchings and labours in his ministry; which what a rich booty it would be, what a plump endowment to the many-benefice-gaping-mouth of a prelate, what a relish it would give to his canary-sucking and swan-eating palate, let old bishop Mountain judge for me.

How little therefore those ancient times make for modern bishops hath been plainly discoursed; but let them make for them as much as they will, yet why we ought not to stand to their arbitrement, shall now appear by a threefold corruption which will be found upon them. 1. The best times were spreadingly infected: 2. The best men of those times, foully tainted: 3. The best writings of those men, dangerously adulterated. These positions are to be made good out of those times witnessing of themselves. First Ignatius in his early days testifies to the churches. of Asia, that even then heresies were sprung up, and rife everywhere, as Eusebius relates in his 3rd book, 35 chap., after the Greek number. And Hegesippus, a grave church writer of prime antiquity, affirms in the same book of Eusebius, c. 32, "that while the apostles were on earth, the depravers of doctrine did but lurk; but they once gone, with open forehead they durst preach down the truth with falsities." Yea, those that are reckoned for orthodox began to make sad and shameful rents in the Church about the trivial celebration of feasts, not agreeing when to keep Easter-day; which controversy grew so hot, that Victor, the bishop of Rome, excommunicated all the Churches of Asia for no other cause, and was worthily thereof reproved by Irenæus. For can any sound theologer think, that these great fathers understood what was Gospel, or what was excommunication? Doubtless that which led the good men into fraud and error was, that they attended more to the near tradition of what they heard the apostles sometimes did, than to what they had left written, not considering

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that many things which they did were by the apostles themselves professed to be done only for the present, and of mere indulgence to some scrupulous converts of the circumcision, but what they writ was of firm decree to all future ages. Look but a century lower in the 1st cap. of Eusebius's 8th book. What a universal tetter of impurity had envenomed every part, order, and degree of the church! To omit the lay herd, which will be little regarded, "Those that seem to be our pastors," saith he, "overturning the law of God's worship, burnt in contentions one towards another, and increasing in hatred and bitterness, outrageously sought to uphold lordship and command as it were a tyranny." Stay but a little, magnanimous bishops; suppress your aspiring thoughts, for there is nothing wanting but Constantine to reign, and then tyranny herself shall give up all her citadels into your hands, and count ye thenceforward her trustiest agents. Such were these that must be called the ancientest and most virgin times between Christ and Constantine. Nor was this general contagion in their actions, and not in their writings. Who is ignorant of the foul errors, the ridiculous wresting of Scripture, the heresies, the vanities thick sown through the volumes of Justin Martyr, Clemens, Origen, Tertullian, and others of eldest time? Who would think him fit to write an apology for Christian faith to the Roman senate, that would tell them "how of the angels," which he must needs mean those in Genesis, called the sons of God, "mixing with women were begotten the devils," as good Justin Martyr in his Apology told them? But more indignation would it move to any Christian that shall read Tertullian terming St. Paul a novice and raw in grace, for reproving St. Peter at Antioch, worthy to be blamed, if we believe the epistle to the Galatians. Perhaps from this hint the blasphemous Jesuits presumed in Italy to give their judgment of St. Paul as of a hotheaded person, as Sandys in his relations tells us.

Now besides all this, who knows not how many superstitious works are ingraffed into the legitimate writings of the fathers ? And of those books that pass for authentic, who knows what hath been tampered withal, what hath been razed out, what hath been