PREFAT. SECT. VII. 146 Imperfections do not destroy their authority; was nothing but a satire on the nature of man; and the difDISCOURSE, ferences among the clergy in or out of councils, never had that effect upon the Christians of ancient times, as to make them despise their order, or disobey their authority, much less to suspect that Christian priesthood was but priestcraft. There were then no such monsters among Christians, no such infernal enemies to priesthood, as our author and his gang. For they did not only consider, that priests were men subject to divers temptations, and capable, like other Christians, of committing sins of all sorts, but believed also, that as the devils, those enemies of Christ, were more diligent to tempt Christians than other men; so they were busier with priests than other Christians; but never thought the priesthood, or the authority belonging to it, ought to be affected with the miscarriages, or fall of their priests. At his way of speaking, what a fine harangue might a learned Jew or Mahometan make against Christianity, from the former and later divisions of Christians, out of Christian writers, with particular reflections upon these times, in which, to the great dishonour of the Christian religion, but without being a real argument against the truth of it, Christian nations and kingdoms have for twenty years been sheathing their swords in one another's bowels, to say no worse, in most unchristian wars, without a sword being drawn in any part of the unbelieving world. His words also in the mouth, or from the pen, of a Sadducee, or of a theistical Jew, if there had been any such, would have made a fine flourish of no force against the Jewish clergy, to persuade his readers, if he could, that the Mosaic priesthood and institutions were all priestcraft; and that Moses (as a theist lately said) was a cunning fellow, who made himself a king, and his brother a priest. The golden calf; the sons of Eli, those sons of Belial, who made themselves so vile; the priests taking strange wives in their captivity; their polluting the table of the Lord after it; all the complaints in the prophets against them, particularly in their synodical capacity, as members of the Sanhedrim, would have been matter of a much more plausible harangue against the priesthood then, than all our author hath collected now; yet for all this, and much more, that might be added, the Jewish princes, and people, still venerated their priests for any more than that of temporal councils. 147 CILS. the sake of their office, and that for the sake of its Divine OF COUNinstitution; and had any of them been so wicked as this author, to write after his reproachful manner against the priests, the whole congregation would have stoned him to death. Our Lord, who knew the wickedness of the priests, and that He should be crucified by them, never spoke against them as priests, but was subject to them, and bid those He cured go and shew themselves to them, and offer their gifts according to the law of Moses. Whatever He, or His Apostles, said of them as sinners, they never spoke against the priesthood, or against them as priests; and therefore it was blaspheming of Him, and slandering of them, in their table talk, to say, that the author of the Rights, in speaking against priests, did no more than Christ and His apostles did. But to proceed; his way of exposing and deriding ecclesiastical synods, is in effect libelling all temporal senates, states, diets, and parliaments, and arguing against these, as well as them. He cannot but know that the senate of Rome, when a commonwealth, was so corrupt that they would have sold the city and citizens, if they could have found any to buy them, and that Tiberius the emperor, when he went out of the senate house, used to say aloud in Greek, O homines ad servitutem paratoss! And Petronius, in his verses of the civil wars, wrote thus of senate and people, emptique Quirites Ad prædam, strepitumque lucri suffragia vertunt ; He knows how the Jewish Sanhedrim, which was their senate, [Tacit. Annal., lib. iii. c. 65.] [Tit. Petronii de Bello Civili, 1. 39. Satyricon, c. 119.] DISCOURSE, SECT. VII. 148 come. Tindal's argument retorted on lay assemblies; PREFAT. order into confusion, and involved their countries in broils, wars, and desolation; "Reputation, and honour, shame, and disgrace, which," as our author speaks", "frequently influence single persons, having quite lost their force in such bodies" of men. I need not go abroad for instances, the direful history of the parliament, that begun in 1641, is a proof, a deplorable domestic proof, of what I say against him for asserting, that "the laity can have no motive, no temptation to abuse or corrupt religion to advance their temporal interest," and it will be a testimony against him in all ages to And an enemy of parliaments, after his ill logic, and worse example, may say in his words'; 'The conduct of parliaments is a sufficient demonstration against all their pretences of doing justice, since that cardinal and benign virtue is likelier to be found any where than in such assemblies ; and it would be strange if right should be found to dwell where justice and humanity are seldom to be found.' Nay, if our author desires more examples, let him consult Prynne, his dear oracle Prynne, in his preface to the Abridgement of the Records", and in his Seasonable, &c. Vindication of the Liberties of English Freemena, and there he will find great plenty. Nevertheless, though parliaments have sometimes been so factious in themselves, so unjust to private persons, and so mischievous to the kingdom, as he represents, yet all true Englishmen love the national constitution of parliaments, u X z [Rights, p. 194.] [An exact abridgment of the re- § 13. That all such parliaments and ambitious self-seekers in them, who would extend to the authority of the Apostles. 149 CILS. and honour them, and submit to their laws, and other deter- OF COUNminations which they make, though after much heat, and mighty discord and contention among themselves. "It Acts 15. 28. In like manner the ancient Christian clergy and laity submitted to the laws and determinations of true and lawful councils and synods, which they made sometimes after long and great debates and contentions; because they knew that the care of the Church was committed, in whole as well as in part, jointly as well as severally, to the bishops, as governors of it under Christ, and that it belongs to them to make canons for the good government of the Church, and determine all disputes and differences arising therein. But our author, with his usual modesty, calls canons and determinations "impositions upon the people";" and so, if he pleases, he may say that the apostles and elders, who met in council at Jerusalem, and the Holy Ghost, who was present with Acts 15. them, 'imposed' upon the Gentiles abstinence from meats offered to idols, from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication. Nay, if it will do him any good, I can prove it for him from the original word ἐπιτίθεσθαι. seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to 'impose upon' you no greater burden than these necessary things." Indeed all orders, commands, and decrees of lawful superiors, are 'impositions,' and the canons and injunctions of the Church are in no other sense such, than all the acts, and edicts, and definitive sentences of kings or senates, or courts of last appeal in all the nations of the earth. This new way of arguing against ecclesiastical synods and councils, from the contentions which happen in them, hath a farther prospect than most readers will at first discern. For as the men who make a flourish with it are enemies of the clergy, and as their speaker, our author plainly tells us, would have the whole affair of religion managed by lay hands: so when they find their opportunity, they will turn it upon the first ministers of the Gospel, the Apostles, who they will have the impudence to say, first "pretended to the Spirit to sanctify what they did," and to give colour to what they say. They will ask, "how the Spirit could be with men" who had such [Rights, p. 191.] e [Ibid., c. vi. p. 194.] d [Ibid., p. 193.] e [See Rights, pp. 205-207.] DISCOURSE, Gal. 2. 11. 150 Charges of the Orthodox against the Arians, justified. PREFAT. shameful divisions among themselves; sometimes for superiSECT. VII. ority, "who should be the greatest;" sometimes for trifles, as Luke 22.24. Paul with Barnabas; and sometimes about matters of reliActs 15. 39. gion, as Paul with Peter, whom he withstood to his face? Nay, to discredit Christianity as much as they can, they will declaim with all their wit and malice upon the divisions, fac[1 Cor. 1. tions, and contentions in the Church of Corinth, planted by 10.] the Apostle himself. These scorners, when it will serve their turn, will make them, as well as the quarrels and contentions in councils, a common place for their scurrility; and, "I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, and I of Christ,” shall be an Herculean argument with them, that laymen would make much better Church governors than priests. He saith, that "by the account which the orthodox give of the many Arian councils, one would think they were speaking of devils, and not of men." And let any man read the ecclesiastical historians, particularly but three short chapters in the first book of the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, and the sixteenth chapter of the fourth, which he artfully conceals, and then let him judge, if, for their cruelty and lying, they deserved not to be so spoken of. [Gregory Nazianzen's twenty-fifth oration", and1] Arsenius's hand [are] enough to justify the most severe speeches of them, without [reciting] their barbarous persecutions and cruelties in the Arian reigns. Besides, the faithful always believed that heretics were acted and inspired by the devils; and so, according to the Jewish and Christian doctrine relating to the power those wicked spirits have over wicked men, I make no difficulty to speak of the author of the Rights, and such writers, f Ibid., p. 194. [Socratis, Hist. Eccl., lib. i. c. xxvii-xxix. tom. ii. pp. 62-66. The first three chapters detail the calumnies of the Arian bishops, of the Eusebian party, against St. Athanasius, first before Constantine, and then in the council of Tyre, A.D. 355. They produced here a hand, which they affirmed was that of Arsenius, a Meletian bishop, who had, as they alleged, been killed by Athanasius. The appearance of Arsenius himself refuted the charge. The last chapter referred to, contains an instance of the cruelty |