known duty; and to imagine Peter to speak of any such thing is a fancy.

The consequence of this divesting the Roman synagogue of the privileges of a true church in any sense, arising in the thoughts of some to a denial of that ministry, which we have at this day in England, must by the way a little be considered. For my part (be it spoken without offence), if any man hath nothing to plead for his ministry, but merely that successive ordination which he hath received through the church of Rome, I cannot see a stable bottom of owning him so to be; I do not say, if he will plead nothing else, but if he hath nothing else to plead. He may have that which indeed constitutes him a minister, though he will not own that so it doth. Nor doth it come here into inquiry, whether there were not a true ministry in some all along under the papacy, distinct from it, as were the thousands in Israel in the days of Elijah; when in the ten tribes, as to the public worship, there was no true ministry at all. Nor is it said that any have their ministry from Rome, as though the office, which is an ordinance of Christ, was instituted by antichrist: but the question is, whether this be a sufficient and good basis and foundation of any man's interest in the office of the ministry, that he hath received ordination in a succession, through the administration of, not the woman flying into the wilderness under the persecution of antichrist, not of the two witnesses prophesying all along under the Roman apostacy, not from them to whom we succeed in doctrine, as the Waldenses, but the beast itself, the persecuting church of Rome, the pope and his adherents, who were certainly administrators of the ordination pleaded for: so that in doctrine we should succeed the persecuted woman, and in office the persecuting beast. I shall not plead this at large, professedly disclaiming all thoughts of rejecting those ministers, as papal and antichristian, who yet adhere to this ordination; being many of them eminently gifted of God to dispense the word, and submitted unto by his people in the administration of the ordinances, and are right worthy ministers of the gospel of Christ. But,

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I shall only remark something on the plea that is int sisted on by them, who would (if I mistake not) keep up in

this particular, what God would have pulled down. They ask us, why not ordination from the church of Rome as well as the Scripture? In which inquiry I am sorry that some do still continue. We are so far from having the Scriptures from the church of Rome, by any authority of it as such, that it is one cause of daily praising God, that by his providence he kept them from being either corrupted or destroyed by them. It is true, the Bible was kept among the people that lived in those parts of the world where the pope prevailed: so was the Old Testament by the Jews; the whole by the eastern Christians: by none so corrupted as by those of the papal territory. God forbid we should say we had the Scriptures from the church of Rome, as such; if we had, why do we not keep them as she delivered them to us, in the vulgar translation, with the apocryphal additions? The ordination pleaded for, is from the authority of the church of Rome, as such: the Scriptures were by the providence of God preserved under the papacy for the use of his people; and had they been found by chance, as it were, like the law of old, they had been the same to us that now they are. So that of these things there is not the same

reason.

It is also pleaded, that the granting true ordination to the church of Rome doth not prove that to be a true church. This I profess I understand not; they who ordained had no power so to do, but as they were officers of that church; as such they did it; and if others had ordained, who were not officers of that church, all would confess that action to be null. But they who will not be contented that Christ hath appointed the office of the ministry to be continued in his churches, that he continues to dispense the gifts of his Spirit for the execution of that office when men are called thereunto, that he prepares the hearts of his people to desire and submit unto them in the Lord, that as to the manner of entrance upon the work, they may have it according to the mind of Christ to the utmost in all circumstances; so soon as his churches are shaken out of the dust of Babylon with his glory shining on them, and the tabernacle of God is thereby once more placed with men, shall have leave for me to derive their interest in the ministry through that dark

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passage, wherein I cannot see one step before me: if they are otherwise qualified and accepted as above, I shall ever pay them that honour which is due to elders labouring in the word and doctrine.

CHAP. VII.

Of a particular church; its nature. Frequently mentioned in Scripture. Particular congregations acknowledged the only churches of the first institution. What ensued on the multiplication of churches. Some things premised to clear the unity of the church in this sense. Every believer ordinarily obliged to join himself to some particular church. Many things in instituted worship answering a natural principle. Perpetuity of the church in this sense. True churches at first planted in England. How they ceased so to be. How churches may be again re-erected. Of the union of a particular church in itself. Foundation of that union twofold. The union itself. Of the communion of particular churches one with another. Our concernment in this union.

I NOW descend to the last consideration of a church, in the most usual acceptation of that name in the New Testament, that is, of a particular instituted church. A church in this sense I take to be a society of men, called by the word to the obedience of the faith in Christ, and joint performance of the worship of God in the same individual ordinances, according to the order by Christ prescribed. This general description of it exhibits its nature so far as is necessary to clear the subject of our present disquisition. A more accurate definition would only administer farther occasion of contesting about things, not necessary to be determined as to the inquiry in hand. Such as this was the church at Jerusalem that was persecuted, Acts viii. 1. the church whereof Saul made havoc, ver. 3. the church that was vexed by Herod, Acts xii. 1. Such was the church at Antioch, which assembled together in one place,' Acts xiii. 14. wherein were sundry prophets, Acts xiii. 1. as that at Jerusalem consisted of elders and brethren, Acts xv. 22. the apostles or some of them being there then present, which added no other consideration to that church than that we are now speaking of. Such were those many churches wherein elders were ordained by Paul'sappointment, Acts xiv. 23.

as also the church of Cæsarea, Acts xviii. 22. and at Ephesus, Acts xx. 14. 28. as was that of Corinth, 1 Cor. i. 2. vi.. 4. 11, 12. xiv. 4, 5. 12. 19. 2 Cor. i. 1. and those mentioned, Rev. i. 2, 3. all which Paul calls the churches of the Gentiles, Rom. xvi. 4. in contradistinction to those of the Jews; and calls them indefinitely the churches of God, ver. 16. or the churches of Christ, 1 Cor. vii. 17. 2 Cor. viii. 18, 19. 23. 2 Thess. i. 4. and in sundry other places. Hence we have mention of many churches in one country, as in Judea, Acts ix. 1. in Asia, 1 Cor. xvi. 19. in Macedonia, 2 Cor. viii. 1. in Galatia, Gal. i. 2. the seven churches of Asia, Rev. i. 11. and unto ràç wóλɛç, Acts xvi. 4. ai ékkλŋoíaι answers, ver. 5. in the same country.

I suppose that in this description of a particular church I have not only the consent of them of all sorts with whom I have now to do, as to what remains of this discourse, but also their acknowledgment that these were the only kinds of churches of the first institution. The reverend authors of the Jus Divinum Ministerii Anglicani, p. 2. c. 6. tell us, that in the beginning of Christianity the number of believers even in the greatest cities were so few, as that they might all meet inì rò avrò, in one and the same place. And these are called the church of the city, and the angel of such a city was congregational, not diocesan;' which discourse exhibits that state of a particular church which is now pleaded for, and which shall afterward be evinced, allowing no other, no not in the greatest cities. In a rejoinder to that treatise, so far as the case of episcopacy is herein concerned, by a person well known by his labours in that cause, this is acknowledged to be so. 'Believers,' saith he, in great cities were not at first divided into parishes, whilst the number of Christians was so small that they might well assemble in the same place,' Ham. Vind. p. 16. Of the believers of one. city meeting in one place, being one church, we have the like grant, p. 18. In this particular church,' he says, there was one bishop, which had the rule of it, and of the believers in the villages adjacent to that city; which as it sometimes was not so, Rom. xvi. 1, 2. so for the most part it seems to have been the case; and distinct churches upon the growth of the number of believers were to be erected in several places of the vicinage.

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And this is the state of a particular instituted church which we plead for. Whether in process of time, believers multiplying, those who had been of one church met in several assemblies, by a settled distribution of them, to celebrate the same ordinances specifically, and so made many churches;: or met in several places in parties, still continuing one body, and were governed in common by the elders, whom they increased and multiplied in proportion to the increase of believers; or whether, that one or more officers, elders, or bishops, of that first single congregation, taking on him or them the care of those inhabiting the city wherein the church was first planted, designed and sent some fitted for that purpose, upon their desire and choice, or otherwise, to the several lesser companies of the region adjacent, which in process of time became dependent on, and subject to, the. officer and officers of that first church from whence they came forth, 1 dispute not. I am satisfied that the first plantation of churches was as hath been pleaded: and I know what was done afterward on the one hand or the other must be examined, as to our concernment, by what ought to have been done. But of those things afterward.

Now according to the course of procedure hitherto insisted on, a declaration of the unity of the church in this sense, what it is, wherein it doth consist, with what it is to be guilty of the breach of that unity, must ensue; and this shall be done after I have premised some few things previously necessary thereunto.

I say then,

1. A man may be a member of the catholic church of Christ, be united to him by the inhabitation of his Spirit, and participation of life from him, who upon the account of some providential hindrance, is never joined to any particular congregation, for the participation of ordinances, all his days.

2. In like manner may he be a member of the church considered as professing visibly; seeing that he may do all that is of him required thereunto, without any such conjunction to a visible particular church, But yet,

3. I willingly grant, that every believer is obliged, as in a part of his duty, to join himself to some one of those churches of Christ; that therein he may abide in doctrine,