of so little weight, that I shall be ashamed to quote them on either side of the question.

Upon the clergy's owing the king head of the church at the reformation, all the bishops took out commissions for the exercising their ecclesiastical jurisdiction; which were renewed again upon his son's coming to the throne. In these commissions, all ecclesiastical jurisdiction is owned to proceed from the crown, as from a supreme head and fountain and spring of all magistracy, in the kingdom; and they acknowledge, that they executed it formerly only ex precario, and that now with grateful minds they accepted the favour from the king's liberty and indulgence, and would be always ready to yield it up again, when his majesty pleased to require it.

These commissions recited, amongst other particulars of spiritual power, that of ordaining presbyters, and of ecclesiastical correction.

The 2d canon excommunicates every one who shall endeavour to hurt or extenuated the king's authority in ecclesiastical cases, as it is settled by the laws of the kingdom, and declares he shall not be restored till be has publickly recanted such impious errours.

The 37th canon obliges all persons, to their utmost, to keep and observe all and every one of the statues and laws, made for restoring to the crown, the ancient jurisdiction it had over the ecclesiastical state.

The 12th of king James' canons declares, that whoever shall affirm that it is lawful for the order either of ministers or laicks, to make canons, decrees, or constitutions in ecclesiastical matters, without the kings authority, and submits himself to be governed by them, is, ipso facto, excommunicated, and is not to be absolved before he has publickly repented and renounced these anabaptistical errours.

Archbishop Bancroft, when, at the head of all the bishops in England, he delivered articles to king James against the secular courts, for encroaching upon the ecclesiastical, owns, that all jurisdictions, ecclesiastical as well as civil, are annexed to the imperial crown of this realm, as may be read more at large in the lord Coke's third institute ; which I would recommend to the perusal of every one, as a specimen of the difference between ecclesiasticks and laymen.

I shall think it necessary only here to add, that the clergy have never presumed, by any publick act, directly to controvert this prerogative, or indeed even to nibble at it, unless in one instance during the last reign; which the queen resented highly, and let the convocation know, by a letter to the archbishop, that she was resolved to maintain her supremacy, as a fundamental part of the constitution of the church of England.

This is the supremacy of the crown; these are the genuine principles of the church of England; which whoever denies, may be a papist, a presbyterian, a muggletonian, a fifth-monarchy man, or any thing else, besides a member of our communion. This doctrine, and these opinions, have been acknowledged and sworn to by every ecclesiastick since the reformation; and we daily see they are all ready to swear them over again upon any fresh motives of advantage; and sure no one will suggest, that the whole clergy of England have lived in the state of perjury for near two hundred years: I am sure, if this be the case, it is not their interest to let us know it, since their authority must be of very little weight in any thing else.

We have it here upon oath, that all jurisdiction, power and authority, spiritual or ecclesiastical, of what kind or sort soever it be, does flow from, and is derived from the king's majesty; and I readily allow them to have all the rest by divine right. They have been always very happy at distinctions and discoveries, and therefore if they can find out any power or authority, which is of no kind or sort whatsoever, I think they ought to have it for their pains: I wish them much joy with it; and shall own it always to be sacrilege in any one who shall attempt to take it from them: but, if there be any such thing, it is plain, that it belongs to them as governours of the invisible church, and is of a nature which we know nothing of.

For it is certain, that archbishops and bishops are creatures of the civil power, and derive their being and existence from it. They are chosen by the direction of one act of parliament, and ordained and consecrated according to a model prescribed by another; in which those who officiate, act only ministerially; and all other methods of choosing them which the clergy can devise, are declared void and ineffectual, and will not convey any spiritual power at all: nor, I dare say, will any clergyman in England pay submission to such a choice, if he do not like the man; nor if he do, provided he thinks that he shall lose any thing by it. If the bishops have no power but what they derive from the crown, they can convey none but of the same sort to the inferiour clergy.

I durst not have stood the imputation of calumny, in charging any of the present clergy with 'principles or practices so directly in defiance of these glaring and notorious declarations of the whole body, as well as their own repeated oaths and subscriptions, if I had not the authority of the brightest luminary of the present church and age (our great metropolitan) to bear me out, who assures us in his appeal, "that a new sort of disciplinarians are arisen up from amongst ourselves, who seem to comply with the government of the church, much upon the same account as others do with that of the state; not out of conscience to their duty, or any love they have for it; but because it is the established church, and they cannot keep their preferments without it: they hate our constitution, and all who stand up in good earnest for it; but for all that they hold fast to it; and so go on to subscribe and rail."

To these wild and enthusiastick notions we owe the present disaffection; and most, if not all the calamities and public disturbances that have happened since the revolution; and yet (which is amazing to think of) they have prevailed so far amongst the corrupt part of the ecclesiasticks, that I wish we could find more even of the low-church clergymen, who dare thoroughly to renounce these impious and anabaptiscal errours as their own canons call them.

Dominion! dominion is the loud cry; which, as it has already produced all the cruelties and absurdities of popery, so it is still teeming with, or bringing forth new monsters; and what other issue can be expected from so unnatural a copulation as that of the Christian priesthood with worldly power?

To this we are beholden for all the corruptions and fopperies brought into religious worship, as well as the ill-shapen and ungainly brats of passive obedience; the divine right of kings and bishops; the

uninterrupted succession; the priests power of the keys; of binding and loosing; remitting and retaining sins; the real presence in the sacrament; the altar, and unbloody sacrifice upon it; the giving the Holy Ghost; of excommunication, as laid claim to; and consecration of churches and church-yards; the reconciliation of God's knowing what we shall do with a power in us not to do it; of persecution for opinions, and the tritheistical charity; with a long train of monkish fooleries besides all, or any part of which, could never have entered into the heart of one layman, or clergyman either, if nothing had been to be got by them, T.

NUMBER 15.

The absurdity and impossibility of church-power, as independent on

the State.

I HAVE shewn, in my last two discourses, that the clergy of England have no jurisdiction, power, or authority whatsoever, which is not derived mediately or immediately from the legislature; and that they have all sworn to this principle: I now own myself so much concerned for their reputation, that I will even run the hazard of incurring the displeasure of some of them, by proving, that they have taken true oaths, and that it is impossible to constitute a protestant national church upon any other foundation.

7

I intend to shew, in the course of these papers, that there is not the least colour or pretence for the chimerical distinction of ecclesiastical and civil, in any other sense than as the words maritime and military, are used to denote different branches of the executive power; for, take away the legal establishment, and the clergy can have no power at all but what flows from the consent of voluntary societies; a proposition which I undertake hereafter demonstratively to make out; and I defy all the ecclesiasticks in the world, united together, to take one step towards proving the contrary, without plunging themselves in everlasting nonsense and absurdity.

But to keep them a little in good humour, I will suppose, for the present, that their wild hypothesis is true; and that our Saviour, whilst upon earth, (even against his own declarations) had ecclesiasti cal jurisdiction over the whole earth; that he gave it to the apostles; that they conveyed it on to their successours; and that the church of Rome, and the present clergy of the church of England, as by law established, are their undoubted successours; nay, I will be so civil as not to ask one question, what sort of power that was? But take it for granted that it was worldly authority, and ought to be rewarded and supported by worldly equipage, wealth, and titles; and if they have any thing more to ask of me, I will grant that too, and then examine what use can be made of these concessions to the present purpose.

*I desire first to be informed, from whence they will fetch their ecclesiastical heraldry of archbishops, diocesan bishops, deans, chapters, arch-deacons, the new office of deacons, officials, commissaries, the two houses of convocation with co-ordinate powers, ecclesiastical courts, parish priests, and curates, with the whole train of inferiour machines, and spiritual under-strappers. Here I doubt all their texts, all their schemes will fail them; for very few of these hard names will be found even in their own translations of the bible, and they must have recourse to human authority at last.

If they say, (as I suspect they will) that the government of the church being conveyed down to the bishops from the apostles, they must have all power which is necessary to it; and consequently have a right to appoint courts of judicature, and ecclesiastical officers, as also to give them proper powers to answer the ends of their trust: . I would then ask them, whether this great episcopal authority is given to every bishop, independent of all the rest; to all the bishops of the whole church every where dispersed, agreeing together; to the majority of this whole; or to the majority of any number of them meeting in one place, either by consent, accident, or the appointment of princes or states? for, I think, it must be agreed by all the world, that if the bishops had any power from God, which is independent of the civil sovereign, he cannot restrain, model, or limit it; and that any accidental alterations of the bounds of dominions, either from conquest, chance or consent, can no way affect this divine authority, or hinder its operation.

If every bishop has this whole power delegated to him from God; then by what authority can the exercise of it be afterwards restrained to a particular district or diocese, so as to make his actions out of it, not only invalid, but schismatical and criminal? Who can limit a power given by the Almighty? Not the civil sovereign, who has nothing to do in another jurisdiction; nor the bishop himself, who must accept it upon the terms which God has given it.

It cannot be supposed that he receives it for his own sake, but as a trust for the benefit of Christianity; and it must be the highest breach of this great trust, not to discharge it personally, but to divide it with others, of whose honesty he can have no sufficient knowledge.

Besides, when these bishops differ with one another, (which will happen as often as they have different complexions, interests, or understandings) what must the Christian world then do? Must they follow the bishop of Bangor, or the abbot of W-nst-r? Or suspend their Christianity till they are all agreed? A solid rock truly to build God's church upon !

So great a body of men as the whole Christian church, or the majority of them, never did, or could meet together; and if such a thing were possible, they would only scold or fight; and therefore any one may with great modesty affirm, that no ecclesiastical establishment now in the world did, or could, take its rise from such an assembly.

Nothing therefore remains, but that, once upon a time, a certain number of bishops met together, and settled such constitutions, from

* Dr. Benjamin Hoadley.

† Dr. Francis Atterbury, late bishop of Rochester, and dean of Westmin

ster.

which the rest are derived; otherwise we must fetch them from the civil magistrate, or confess them all to be usurpations.

Those who suppose the first, are obliged to tell us what number are necessary to this purpose; and if another equal number should settle a different establishment in the same district or province, who will be the schismaticks: I think it is agreed by all high-churchmen, that every one of these can make as many other bishops, and governours of the whole church, as he pleases; and therefore if one of them in a frolicksome humour should create two or three hundred of these ecclesiastical princes, are they all to have votes in the episcopal college? And I ask this question the rather, once knew a drunken popish bishop in Ireland, who would have made these spiritual sovereigns from morning tonight, for a pot of ale a-piece...

If it should be said (as indeed what is not or may not be said by persons of their perspicuity?) that the power itself comes from God, but the exercise of it is to be limited and directed by the civil sovereign; I answer, that, besides the egregious blunder of distinguishing between power and the exercise of power, the first being only a right to do certain actions, in which the other consists: this gives up the whole question; for there can be no greater power necessary to give an authority than to take it away; and every restriction and limita tion is taking it away in part: No one can have a right to depose a temporal prince from any part of his just dominions, without having also the same right to deprive him of the whole; and in this respect there can be no difference between temporal and ecclesiastical sovereignties.

If these gentlemen were not in possession of sanctifying nonsense, they could not venture to tell us, that our Saviour has given power to bishops to execute ecclesiastical jurisdiction through the whole earth; and consequently all mankind must be their spiritual subjects: But that this great power may here below be limited and restrained to cities or provinces, and parcelled out and divided in such a manner, that some may have large districts, others small ones, in which no one else must officiate; nay, that many more may have none at all, and yet that every one have universal jurisdiction, and be a bishop of the whole earth. These, with a huge heap besides of glaring absurdities and contradictions, must be maintained by those, who would reconcile the divine right of bishops with any protestant establishment now in the world. I have so amply shewn how inconsistent it is with our own, from the whole tenor of our laws and canons, as well as the repeated acknowledgments of the clergy themselves, that I should think it not only needless, but impertinent, to say any thing further of it, did we not daily hear of such numbers of our spiritual guides, who rail against these laws at the time they swear and subscribe to them, and complain aloud of them as violations of their own divine rights, and denounce judgments upon the nation for such usurpations.

I shall, therefore, in my next paper descant a little upon the volun. tary and most applauded actions of the highest, even of these high gentlemen; and shew that they cannot help acknowledging the principle which I maintain, even in the instances where they would oppose it, and amidst their greatest demands for power. This intend to do, not with the least expectation or vain hope of inducing them to alter