the tares," &c.; whereby he declares that this work neither his own ministers nor any else can discerningly enough or judgingly perform without his own immediate direction, in his own fit season, and that they ought till then not to attempt it. Which is further confirmed, 2 Cor. i. 24, "Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy." If apostles had no dominion or constraining power over faith or conscience, much less have ordinary ministers. 1 Pet. v. 2, 3, "Feed the flock of God, not by constraint, &c., neither as being lords over God's heritage."

But some will object, that this overthrows all church discipline, all censure of errors, if no man can determine. My answer is, that what they hear is plain Scripture, which forbids not church sentence or determining, but as it ends in violence upon the conscience unconvinced. Let whoso will interpret or determine, so it be according to true church discipline; which is exercised on them only who have willingly joined themselves in that covenant of union, and proceeds only to a separation from the rest, proceeds never to any corporal enforcement or forfeiture of money, which in spiritual things are the two arms of antichrist, not of the true church; the one being an inquisition, the other no better than a temporal indulgence of sin for money, whether by the church exacted or by the magistrate; both the one and the other a temporal satisfaction for what Christ hath satisfied eternally; a Popish commuting of penalty, corporal for spiritual; a satisfaction to man, especially to the magistrate, for what and to whom we owe none: these and more are the injustices of force and fining in religion, besides what I most insist on, the violation of God's express commandment in the Gospel, as hath been shewn. Thus, then, if church governors cannot use force in religion, though but for this reason, because they cannot infallibly determine to the conscience without convincement, much less have civil magistrates authority to use force where they can much less judge, unless they mean only to be the civil executioners of them who have no civil power to give them such commission, no, nor yet ecclesiastical, to any force or violence in religion. To sum up all in brief-if we must believe as the magistrate appoints, why not rather as the church? If not as either without convincement, how can force be lawful?

But some are ready to cry out, What shall then be done to blasphemy? Them I would first exhort not thus to terrify and pose the people with a Greek word, but to teach them better what it is, being a most usual and common word in that language to signify any slander, any malicious or evil speaking, whether against God or man or any thing to good belonging: blasphemy or evil speaking against God maliciously, is far from conscience in religion, according to that of Mark ix. 39, "There is none who doth a powerful work in my name, and can lightly speak evil of me." If this suffice not, I refer them to that prudent and well-deliberated Act of August 9, 1650, where the Parliament defines blasphemy against God, as far as it is a crime belonging to civil judicature, "pleniùs ac meliùs Chrysippo et Crantore;" in plain English, more warily, more judiciously, more orthodoxally, than twice their number of divines have done in many a prolix volume; although in all likelihood they whose whole study and profession these things are, should be most intelligent and authentic therein, as they are for the most part, yet neither they nor these unerring always or infallible.

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But we shall not carry it thus; another Greek apparition stands in our way, "heresy" and "heretic," in like manner also railed at to the people as in a tongue unknown. They should first interpret to them, that heresy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word of evil note, meaning only the choice or following of any opinion, good or bad, in religion or any other learning; and thus not only in Heathen authors, but in the New Testament itself, without censure or blame. Acts xv. 5, “Certain of the heresy of the Pharisees which believed;" and xxvi. 5, "After the exactest heresy of our religion I lived a Pharisee." In which sense, Presbyterian or Independent may without reproach be called a heresy. Where it is mentioned with blame, it seems to differ little from schism: 1 Cor. xi. 18, 19, "I hear that there be schisms among you, &c., for there must also be heresies among you," &c.; though some who write of heresy after their own heads, would make it far worse than schism; whenas, on the contrary, schism signifies division, and in the worst sense; heresy, choice only of one opinion before another, which may be without discord. In apostolic times, therefore, ere the Scripture was written, heresy was a doctrine

maintained against the doctrine by them delivered; which in these times can be no otherwise defined than a doctrine maintained against the light, which we now only have, of the Scripture.

Seeing, therefore, that no man, no synod, no session of men, though called the church, can judge definitively the sense of Scripture to another man's conscience, which is well known to be a general maxim of the Protestant religion, it follows plainly, that he who holds in religion that belief or those opinions which to his conscience and utmost understanding appear with most evidence or probability in the Scripture, though to others he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censured for a heretic than his censurers, who do but the same thing themselves while they censure him for so doing. For ask them, or any Protestant, which hath most authority, the Church or the Scripture? they will answer, doubtless, that the Scripture; and what hath most authority, that, no doubt, but they will confess is to be followed. He then who to his best apprehension follows the Scripture, though against any point of doctrine by the whole church received, is not the heretic, but he who follows the church against his conscience and persuasion grounded on the Scripture.

To make this yet more undeniable, I shall only borrow a plain simile, the same which our own writers, when they would demonstrate plainest that we rightly prefer the Scripture before the church, use frequently against the Papist in this manner. As the Samaritans believed

Christ, first for the woman's word, but next and much rather for his own, so we the Scripture, first on the church's word, but afterwards and much more for its own, as the word of God; yea, the church itself we believe then for the Scripture. The inference of itself follows: if by the Protestant doctrine we believe the Scripture, not for the church's saying, but for its own, as the word of God, then ought we to believe what in our conscience we apprehend the Scripture to say, though the visible church with all her doctors gainsay; and being taught to believe them only for the Scripture, they who so do are not heretics, but the best Protestants; and by their opinions, whatever they be, can hurt no Protestant, whose rule is not to receive them but from the Scripture; which to interpret convincingly to his own conscience none is able but himself, guided by the Holy Spirit; and not so

guided, none than he to himself can be a worse deceiver.

To Protestants, therefore, whose common rule and touchstone is the Scripture, nothing can with more conscience, more equity, nothing more Protestantly can be permitted, than a free and lawful debate at all times, by writing, conference, or disputation, of what opinion soever disputable by Scripture; concluding, that no man in religion is properly a heretic at this day, but he who maintains traditions or opinions not probable by Scripture; who, for aught I know, is the Papist only; he the only heretic, who counts all heretics but himself. Such as these, indeed, were capitally punished by the law of Moses, as the only true heretics, idolaters, plain and open deserters of God and his known law; but in the Gospel such are punished by excommunion only (Tit. iii. 10): "An heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject."

But they who think not this heavy enough, and understand not that dreadful awe and spiritual efficacy which the apostle hath expressed so highly to be in church-discipline (2 Cor. x.), of which anon, and think weakly that the church of God cannot long subsist but in a bodily fear, for want of other proof, will needs wrest that place of St. Paul, Rom. xiii., to set up civil inquisition, and give power to the magistrate both of civil judgment and punishment in causes ecclesiastical. But let us see with what strength of argument. "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." First, how prove they that the apostle means other powers than such as they to whom he writes were then under, who meddled not at all in ecclesiastical causes, unless as tyrants and persecutors ?and from them, I hope, they will not derive either the right of magistrates to judge in spiritual things, or the duty of such our obedience. How prove they, next, that he entitles them here to spiritual causes, from whom he withheld, as much as in him lay, the judging of civil? (1 Cor. vi. 1, &c.) If he himself appealed to Cæsar, it was to judge his innocence, not his religion. "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil;" then are they not a terror to conscience, which is the rule or judge of good works grounded on the Scripture. But heresy, they say, is reckoned among evil works (Gal. v. 20); as if all evil works were to be punished by the magistrate;

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whereof this place, their own citation, reckons up besides heresy a sufficient number to confute them,-"uncleanness, wantonness, enmity, strife, emulations, animosities, contentions, envyings,"—all which are far more manifest to be judged by him than heresy, as they define it; and yet I suppose they will not subject these evil works, nor many more such like, to his cognizance and punishment. Wilt thou, then, not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same. This shews that religious matters are not here meant; wherein from the power here spoken of they could have no praise. "For he is the minister of God to thee for good." True; but in that office, and to that end, and by those means, which in this place must be clearly found, if from this place they intend to argue. And, how for thy good by forcing, oppressing and ensnaring thy conscience? Many are the ministers of God, and their offices no less different than many; none more different than state and church government. Who seeks to govern both, must needs be worse than any lord prelate or churchpluralist: for he in his own faculty and profession, the other not in his own, and for the most part not thoroughly understood, makes himself supreme lord or pope of the church as far as his civil jurisdiction stretches, and all the ministers of God therein, his ministers, or his curates rather in the function only, not in the government; while he himself assumes to rule by civil power things to be ruled only by spiritual; whenas this very chapter, ver. 6, appointing him his peculiar office, which requires utmost attendance, forbids him this worse than church-plurality from that full and weighty charge, wherein alone he is "the minister of God, attending continually on this very thing."

To little purpose will they here instance Moses, who did all by immediate divine direction; no, nor yet Asa, Jehoshaphat or Josiah, who both might when they pleased receive answer from God, and had a commonwealth by him delivered them, incorporated with a national church exercised more in bodily than in spiritual worship, so as that the church might be called a commonwealth, and the whole commonwealth a church; nothing of which can be said of Christianity, delivered without the help of magistrates, yea, in the midst of their opposition; how little, then, with any reference to them or mention of them, save