diftinction of honour were to be made among them, they directed it should be to those not that only rule well, but especially to those that labour in the word and doctrine. By which we are taught that laborious teaching is the moft honourable prelaty that one minifter can have above another in the gofpel; if, therefore the fuperiority of bishopship be grounded on the priesthood as a part of the moral law, it cannot be faid to be an imitation; for it were ridiculous that morality fhould imitate morality, which ever was the fame thing. This very word of patterning or imitating, excludes epifcopacy from the folid and grave ethical law, and betrays it to be a mere child of ceremony, or likelier fome mifbegotten thing, that having plucked the gay feathers of her obfolete bravery, to hide her own deformed barrennefs, now vaunts and glories in her stolen plumes. In the mean while, what danger there is against the very life of the gospel, to make in any thing the typical law her pattern, and how impoffible in that which touches the priestly government, I fhall use fuch light as I have received, to lay open. It cannot be unknown by what expreffions the holy apoftle St. Paul fpares not to explain to us the nature and condition of the law, calling those ordinances, which were the chief and effential offices of the priests, the elements and rudiments of the world, both weak and beggarly. Now to breed, and bring up the children of the promife, the heirs of liberty and grace, under fuch a kind of government as is profeffed to be but an imitation of that miniftry, which engendered to bondage the fons of Agar; how can this be but a foul injury and derogation, if not a cancelling of that birthright and immunity, which Chrift hath purchafed for us with his blood? For the miniftration of the law, confifting of carnal things, drew to it such a miniftry as confifted of carnal refpects, dignity, precedence, and the like. And fuch a ministry established in the gospel, as is founded upon the points and terms of fuperiority, and nefts itself in worldly honours, will draw to it, and we fee it doth, fuch a religion as runs back again to the old pomp and glory of the flesh: for doubtlefs there is a certain attraction and magnetic force betwixt the religion and the minifterial form thereof. If the religion be pure, spiritual, fimple, and lowly, as the gofpel most

truly

truly is, fuch muft the face of the ministry be. And in like manner, if the form of the miniftry be grounded in the worldly degrees of authority, honour, temporal jurifdiction, we fee with our eyes it will turn the inward power and purity of the gofpel into the outward carnality of the law; evaporating and exhaling the internal worship into empty conformities, and gay fhows. fhows. And what remains then, but that we fhould run into as dangerous and deadly apoftafy as our lamentable neighbours the papifts, who, by this very fnare and pitfall of imitating the ceremonial law, fell into that irrecoverable fuperftition, as muft needs make void the covenant of falvation to them that perfift in this blindness ?

CHA P. IV.

That it is impoffible to make the priesthood of Aaron a pattern whereon to ground epifcopacy.

THAT which was promifed next is, to declare the impoffibility of grounding evangelic government in the imitation of the jewish priesthood; which will be done by confidering both the quality of the perfons, and the office itself. Aaron and his fons were the princes of their tribe, before they were fanctified to the priesthood: that perfonal eminence, which they held above the other Levites, they received not only from their office, but partly brought it into their office; and fo from that time forward the priests were not chofen out of the whole number of the Levites, as our bishops, but were born inheritors of the dignity. Therefore, unless we shall choose our prelates only out of the nobility, and let them run in a blood, there can be no poffible imitation of lording over their brethren in regard of their perfons altogether unlike. As for the office, which was a reprefentation of Chrift's own perfon more immediately in the high priest, and of his whole prieftly office in all the other, to the performance of which the Levites were but as fervitors and deacons, it was neceffary there fhould be a diftinction of dignity between two functions of so great odds,

odds. But there being no fuch difference among our minifters, unless it be in reference to the deacons, it is impoffible to found a prelaty upon the imitation of this priesthood: for wherein, or in what work, is the office of à prelate excellent above that of a paftor? In ordination, you will fay; but flatly against fcripture: for there we know Timothy received ordination by the hands of the prefbytery, notwithstanding all the vain delufions that are used to evade that teftimony, and maintain an unwarrantable ufurpation. But wherefore fhould ordination be a caufe of fetting up a fuperior degree in the Church? Is not that whereby Chrift became our Saviour a higher and greater work, than that whereby he did ordain meffengers to preach and publish him our Saviour? Every minifter fuftains the perfon of Chrift in his highest work of communicating to us the myfteries of our falvation, and hath the power of binding and abfolving; how fhould he need a higher dignity, to reprefent or execute that which is an inferiour work in Chrift? Why should the performance of ordination, which is a lower office, exalt a prelate, and not the feldom difcharge of a higher and more noble office, which is preaching and adminiftering, much rather deprefs him? Verily, neither the nature nor the example of ordination doth any way require an imparity between the ordainer and the ordained; for what more natural than every like to produce his like, man to beget man, fire to propagate fire? And in examples of higheft opinion the ordainer is inferiour to the ordained; for the pope is not made by the precedent pope, but by cardinals, who ordain and confecrate to a higher and greater office than their own.

CHA P. V.

To the arguments of bishop Andrews and the Primate.

Ir follows here to attend to certain objections in a little treatise lately printed among others of like fort at Oxford, and in the title faid to be out of the rude draughts of

bifhop

bishop Andrews: and furely they be rude draughts indeed, infomuch that it is marvel to think what his friends meant, to let come abroad fuch thallow reafonings with the name of a man fo much bruited for learning. In the twelfth and twenty-third pages he feems most notoriously inconstant tod himself; for in the former place he tells us he forbears to take any argument of prelaty from Aaron, as being the type of Chrift. In the latter he can forbear no longer but repents him of his rafh gratuity, affirming, that to fay, Chrift being come in the flesh, his figure in the high priest ceafeth, is the fhift of an anabaptift; and ftifly argues, that Chrift being as well king as prieft, was as well foreresembled by the kings then, as by the high priest: fo that if his coming take away the one type, it must also the other. Marvellous piece of divinity! and well worth that the land fhould pay fix thoufand pounds a year for in a bishopric; although I read of no fophifter among the Greeks that was fo dear, neither Hippias nor Protagoras, nor any whom the focratic fchool famously refuted without hire. Here we have the type of the king fewed to the tippet of the bishop, fubtlety to caft a jealoufy upon the crown, as if the right of kings, like Meleager in the Metamorphofis, were no longerlived than the firebrand of prelaty. But more likely the prelates fearing (for their own guilty carriage protefts they do fear) that their fair days cannot long hold, practife by poffeffing the king with this moft falfe doctrine, to engage his power for them, as in his own quarrel, that when they fall they may fall in a general ruin; juft as cruel Tiberius would with:

"When I die let the earth be rolled in flames."

But where, O Bishop, doth the purpofe of the law fet forth Chrift to us as a king! That which never was intended in the law can never be abolished as part thereof. When the law was made, there was no king: if before the law, or under the law, God by a special type in any king would forefignify the future kingdom of Chrift, which is not yet vifibly come; what was that to the law? The whole ceremonial law (and types can be in no law elfe) comprehends nothing but the propitiatory office of Chrift's

Chrift's priesthood, which being in fubftance accomplished, both law and priesthood fades away of itself, and paffes into air like a tranfitory vifion, and the right of kings neither stands by any type nor falls. We acknowledge that the civil magiftrate wears an authority of God's giving, and ought to be obeyed as his vicegerent. But to make a king a type, we fay is an abufive and unskilful fpeech, and of a moral folidity makes it seem a ceremonial fhadow: therefore your typical chain of king and priest must unlink. But is not the type of prieft taken away by Chrift's coming? No, faith this famous proteftant bishop of Winchester, it is not; and he that faith it is, is an anabaptift. What think ye, readers, do ye not understand him? What can be gathered hence, but that the prelate would ftill facrifice? Conceive him, readers, he would miffificate. Their altars, indeed, were in a fair forwardness; and by fuch arguments as these they were setting up the molten calf of their mafs again, and of their great hierarch the pope. For if the type of priest be not taken away, then neither of the high priest, it were a ftrange beheading; and high priest more than one there cannot be, and that one can be no lefs than a pope. And this doubtlefs was the bent of his career, though never fo covertly. Yea, but there was fomething elfe in the high priest, besides the figure, as is plain by St. Paul's acknowledging him. It is true, that in the 17th of Deut. whence this authority arifes to the priest in matters too hard for the fecular judges, as muft needs be many in the occafions of those times, involved fo with ceremonial niceties, no wonder though it be commanded to inquire at the mouth of the priests, who befides the magiftrates their colleagues, had the oracle of urim to confult with. And whether the high priest Ananias had not encroached beyond the limits of his prieftly authority, or whether he used it rightly, was no time then for St. Paul to contest about. But if this inftance be able to affert any right of jurifdiction to the clergy, it must impart it in common to all minifters, fince it were a great folly to feek for counfel in a hard intricate fcruple from a dunce prelate, when there might be found a fpeedier folution from a grave and learned minifter, whom God hath gifted with the

judgment