A MODEST OFFER

OF

SOME MEET CONSIDERATIONS,

TENDERED TO THE

LEARNED PROLOCUTOR,

AND TO

THE REST OF THE ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES MET AT WESTMINSTER.

BY A TRUE LOVER OF TRUTH AND PEACE.

MODEST OFFER

OF

SOME MEET CONSIDERATIONS, &c.

LEARNED AND REVEREND BRETHREN:

IF you be now, as is supposed, upon the advice of a Form of Church-Government, I beseech you, in the fear of God, setting aside all prejudice, to take into your sad thoughts these considerations following.

It is, I perceive, an usual prayer of many preachers wellaffected to your Assembly, that God would now, after 1600 years' universal practice of the whole Church of Christ upon earth, shew you the Pattern in the Mount: as if, after so long and perfect inquisitions, there could be any new discoveries of the form that was or should be.

Wherein, I suppose, their well-meaning is not a little injurious both to the known truth and to you: for, what revelations can we expect thus late? or what monuments, of either Scripture or History, can now be hoped to be brought to light, which your eyes have not seen, and former ages have not enquired into?

Surely, ye well know, there can be but these three forms of Church-Government, possibly devised: either by Bishops, or by Presbyteries, or by the multiude of several and select Congregations; every of which have both their abettors and their adversaries. The first hath all times and places, since the days of the blessed Apostles, till this age, to stand for it. The second hath the late persecuted, reformed Church of France (which never desired nor meant to make their necessitated form a pattern for others), the Netherlands, and Scotland, for precedents of it. The third hath the Ministers of New-England and their associates, commonly styled by the name of Independents, vehemently contending for it. The adversaries of every of these are as well known, as their friends; and the pleas, which every of them makes for itself, are as well known as either.

I suppose it is yet res integra: else, I should lay my finger upon my lips. Both the Houses of Parliament, your Assembly

and the whole Kingdom, stand yet free and unengaged to any part. For the National Covenant, as it is interpreted by some of yourselves and those other Divines whose allowed sermons have commented upon it, intends not to abjure and disclaim Episcopacy, as such; but only bends against the whole present fabric of government, as it is built on these arches, these pedestals: so as, if it be taken asunder from those, some of them not necessary, appendances, you are no way forestalled in your judgment against it; nor any other, that hath lift up his hand in this Solemn Covenant.

That I may not urge the Latin translation of the same Covenant, printed and sent abroad to the Low Countries and France and other Churches, which ran only upon tyrannicum regimen Episcoporum; that only "the tyrannical government of the Prelates," not their fatherly and brotherly preeminence, is there abjured.

Your Wisdoms know well, how to distinguish, betwixt a calling and the abuses of the execution thereof; betwixt the main substance of a calling, and the circumstantial and separbale appurtenances thereunto, from which it may be divested and yet stand entire.

I should be a flatterer of the times past, which is not often seen, if I should take upon me to justify or approve of all the carriages of some that have been entrusted with the Keys of Ecclesiastical Government, or to blanch over the corruptions of Consistorial Officers: in both these, there was fault enough to ground both a complaint and reformation: and may that man never prosper, that desires not a happy reformation of whatever hath been or is amiss in the Church of God!.

But this I offer to your serious consideration, whether Episcopacy, stripped of all circumstances that may be justly excepted against, and reduced to the primitive estate, may not be thought a form, both better in itself, and more fit for this Kingdom and Church, than either of the other.

How ancient it is, I need not appeal to any but yourselves; who do well know, that there was never yet any history of the Church, wherein there was not full mention made of Bishops as the only governors thereof: neither can any learned adversary deny, that they have continued, with the general allowance of God's Church, from the very Apostolic Times until this present age. And, whether it can be safe, and lie not open to much scandal, to exchange so ancient an institution, hitherto perpetuated to the Church, for a new, where no necessity enforces us, judge ye.

How universal it is, being the only received government of all the Christian Churches over the face of the whole earth, excepting only this small spot of our neighbourhood, ye know as well as the undoubted relation of the "Christianography"

can tell you. And, how unsafe it may be to depart from the form of all the Churches that profess the name of Christ, who do all submit themselves to Bishops or Superintendents, except the fore-excepted, I leave to your grave judgment.

Besides, how Episcopacy is and hath long been settled in this kingdom; and, as it were incorporated into it, and enwoven into the municipal laws of this land, so as that it cannot be utterly removed without much alteration in the whole body of our laws; is a matter well worthy of not the least consideration.

But all these would yet seem light upon the balance, if there were not an intrinsical worth in the institution itself, that might sway with you.

The Covenant binds to the endeavour of such a government as is according to the Word of God, and the example of the best Reformed Churches.

And, now, let me appeal to your own hearts, and the hearts of all judicious and unprejudicate readers, whether the rules of Church-Government, laid forth in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, do not suppose and import that very proper jurisdiction, which is claimed by Episcopacy at this day which if it were not intended to be left as a perfect pattern to succession, the whole Church of Christ should have been left in the dark, without any direction for the succeeding administration thereof. Those charges are plainly given, not to many, but to one; and do most manifestly imply, not a parity, but preeminence and power.

And, if the example of the best Churches must carry it, what Church could be more pure, and more fit for our imitation than the Primitive; and that part of it, which immediately followed the Apostles of our Blessed Saviour, Jesus Christ? And do not you full well know, that our histories and unquestionable authors name the men, whom those Apostles, by imposition of hands, ordained to this function? Do not Ignatius, Irenæus, Tertullian, Polycrates, Hegesippus, Clemens, Eusebius, Jerome instance in those persons, who succeeded each other in those first Sees?

If you tell me of the difference betwixt the Episcopacy of those first ages of the Church and that of the present times, I do willingly yield it: but, withal, I must add, that it is not in any thing essential to the calling, but in matters outward and merely adventitious; the abatement whereof, if it shall be found needful, diminisheth nothing from the substance of that Holy Institution. What can be more express, than, in the antientest of them, the blessed Martyr Ignatius, the mention of the three distinct degrees of Bishops, Presbyters, Deacons; encharged with their several duties, which were yet never intermitted and let fall to this present day? How frequently and vehemently

doth he, in his genuine Epistles, twice in that to the Ephesians, call for due subjection to the Bishop and Presbytery! How distinctly doth he, in his Epistle to the Magnesians, name their Bishop Dama; and their Presbyters Bassus, Apollonius, Stephanus ? How doth he, in his Epistle Ad Trallianos, set forth the Bishop, ὡς τύπον τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων; and the Presbytery, as ouvédpιov Оeoû к. T. a! And, if any man shall be so unjustly scrupulous, as to call into question the credit of this gracious author, (reserved, no doubt, by a special Providence, for the conviction of the schisms of these last times) therein outdoing Vedelius himself, who stoutly asserteth some of these Epistles while he rejects others as suppositious, let him cast his eyes upon the no less famous and holy Martyr and Bishop, Polycarpus who (as Irenæus, an unquestionable author, tells us, one whose eyes beheld that Saint) did not only converse with those, that had seen Christ; but also was, by the Apostles, constituted, in Asia, Bishop of the Church of Smyrna. Let him, if he can, deny Cyprian, the holy Martyr, and Bishop of Carthage, writing familiarly to the Presbyters and Deacons there; sometimes gravely reproving them, sometimes_fatherly admonishing them of their duties; in divers of his Epistles. Let him deny, that his contemporary, Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, acknowledgeth Forty-six Presbyters committed by the Catholic Church to his charge. Shortly, let him, if he stick at this truth, deny, that there was any Christian Church, of old; any history.

All which duly considered, I would fain know what reason can be shewed, why that ancient, yea first government, by the Bishop and his Presbytery, received; and, with all good approbation and success, used in the Primitive Church; and derived, though not without some faulty omissions and intertextures which may easily be remedied, until this present day; should not rather take place, than a government lately and occasionally raised up in the Church, for the necessity or convenience of some special places and persons, without any intention of an universal rule and prescription.

If you shall say, that this government by Bishops hath been found, by sad experience hitherto, a block in the way of perfect reformation, destructive to the power of godliness, and pure

a Stephanus does not appear to be named in this Epistle. The passage, to which our author refers, is, however, much more to his purpose than it might seem to be from his representation of it; as it distinguishes the Three Orders, and names the parties. The genuine text is as follows:-'Enei ovv ýžíáðnv ἰδεῖν ὑμᾶς διὰ Δάμα τοῦ ἀξιοθέου ὑμῶν Ἐπισκόπου καὶ Πρεσβυτέρων αξίων Βάσσου καὶ ̓Απολλωνίου, καὶ τοῦ συνδούλου μου Διακόνου Σωτίωνος, οὗ ἐγὼ ἀναίμην, ὅτι ὑποτάσσεται τῷ ̓Επισκόπῳ ὡς χάριτι Θεοῦ, καὶ τῷ Πρεσβυτερίῳ ὡς νόμῳ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.—PRATT.

On this passage see note, at p. 212 of this vol.-H.

Iren. advers. Hæres. 1. iii. c. 3.