Of the subject of church power in whom it resides, its force, extent, and execution, that it opposes not civil government in any one instance of it / by Simon Lowth ...

The Introduction.

The Contents.

The Occasion of this Discourse, Sect. 1.

Not the Power and Offices of the Church, but their Subject is what mostly exercises the Age, Sect. 2.

Whether the Power be originally, in Believers in Common, or in the Secular Prince in Particu∣lar, or in a certain Definite Number of Believers, the Bishops and Pastors of the Church, Sect. 3.

The Design of the Whole, and its Three Gene∣ral Heads, Sect. 4.

VVHEN I first consider'd that of Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan, [§. I] Part 1. Cap. 12. Of Religion, and which is in

short to this purpose in several Paragraphs there, That every one is free upon the cea∣sing, or discontinuance of the Miracle, to Supersede or Change his Religion, once at∣tested by that Miracle to be from God, and upon which account it was receiv'd and own'd, if the change of the Climate and his Governors, his former Education, and the present Custom of the Place he resides in, re∣quires; and all that other Authority and Ob∣ligation from Heaven, obliged only for that present instant in which the Miracle was wrought and evidenced; I with less concern passed it by, reflecting on the Person, a Man affected with, and designing Novelty and Singularity, filled with a Conceit of his own worth and autority, and opposing it to all the World beside. And in particular in this Chapter, declaring himself to be such an one that believes an extraordinary felicity a suffi∣cient Testimony of a Divine Calling: but go∣ing on in my Thoughts, and finding by a sad Experience that it went further than the Scheme or Systeme, that a great part of our Age is thereby brought into this Opinion; and 'tis contended for, so frequently, as their Faith, that the Church is nothing at all; but in the State, its Powers and Offices, though once in the Apostles, and some of their Suc∣cessors, for some time, is now gone with those Miracles, that at that time abetted and avou∣ched them; nor is the Gospel it self to be Preached, or divulged upon other terms, or a fixed, enjoyned, false Religion opposed; nay farther, this very same to be the stated professed Opinions of some, and those too,

our highest dignified Church-men, and left upon Record, as the judgment of the greatest part, and some of them the most remarkable, of our first Reformers, that the Prince is in∣vested with whatever belongs to a Church∣man; then was my heart hot within me, and while I was thus musing, the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my Tongue, I then set my self upon a particular immediate en∣quiry into the Matter, and attaining to a more perfect knowledge of that way, I here repre∣sent it to my Fathers and Brethren of the Clergy, to all good Christians whatever, in this following Treatise, and only state the plain case as I find delivered down from our Saviour by his Apostles, the Bishops, Fathers and Doctors of the Church Catholique, the Church Historians, Councils and Laws Impe∣rial, from our own particular Church Arti∣cles, Canons, Rubricks, our Book of Ordi∣nation, and Homilies appointed to be read in the Churches in the time of Q. Elizabeth, from our own Doctors and Writers in Divinity, in their several times, and from the In∣junctions and Declarations of our Princes, and even the Common-Law and Statute Book of our Kingdom, the Honor and Duty I owe to my Jesus, to his Universal Church, to this particular Church of England, to my own Pro∣fession as a Divine, and love to all Christians, is what have engaged to it; other advanta∣ges I have none, nor are any proposed; these Considerations alone are they which now makes the dumb Child speak, looses the string of that Tongue that held its peace and said nothing, and brings him into publick; other∣wise,

by an universal Concurrency of all things, both Persons and Objects design'd for silence and obscurity.

[§. II] NOW in order to this, I have so much prepared and made ready to my hands, that the thing in general is immediately denied by none, and that there is a Church-Power to be alwayes upon Earth, till the restitution of all things, and the Heavens be no more; that is, certain peculiar Persons and Offices to be separated and discharged in and for the affairs of Souls, and the guiding and govern∣ing the World in order to Heaven and Sal∣vation, is affirmed by all that believe a Hea∣ven and Christ Jesus the Way, the Truth, and the Life in the Attainment. That which has so much unhing'd and discompos'd the World of late is, concerning the Subject in which it resides; the particular Persons de∣sign'd and appointed by our Saviour for the conveyance and execution, the due force, just extent and consequences of it, in whom this Power is to be found, and to whom limited, since none are extraordinarily by miraculous and sensible demonstrations from Heaven commissioned and marked out thereunto; as the Apostles and first Publishers of the Gospel were. And though Mr. Selden himself, as our great Herbert Thorndike, in his Principles of Christian Truth, tells us, usually said in his common Discourse, That all Church Power is an Imposture; yet his First Book De Synedriis, designed and levelled against this Autority. Upon this alone score, because presumed in, and limited to the Bishops and Pastors of the Church, as the Successors of Christ and his

Apostles, makes it plain, his quarrel is be∣cause so assumed and limited by them, be∣cause transferr'd from the Prince or Civil Power, in whose hands alone he believes it placed, and in those in deputation by him; and for which he contends all along in that Book (with what Success may be seen here∣after) and therein places the Imposture.

THERE are three distinct Orders of Men, [§. III] or at the least to be supposed distinct, in which this Power is contended for to be seated, each exclusive of one another, by the several Assertors and Fautors of the distant Opinions and Parties among us. The One, places it in the People, the multitude of Be∣lievers in common, as the general first im∣mediate subject of Power Ecclesiastical, who by their concurrent Notes, Elections and As∣signations limit and fix it on particular Per∣sons, for the Execution: so appointing, con∣secrating, and investing for the work of the Ministry, to negotiate in the affairs of Souls, and in order to their Salvation. The Other subjects all in the Prince, or Secular Power, who is supposed in actu Primo, virtually and by a first inherency, to be Priest and People equally as Prince, and by the Right of Sove∣raignty, as chief Magistrate upon Earth, is instructed for all Offices and Duties in rela∣tion to Heaven, with a Power for Deputation and Devolution, as the Harvest may be great, or the Labourers few; upon each occasion requiring, and as he is pleased by his secular Hand to mark out the Person. The Third place it not in the Multitude in general, or in the Prince in special; but in a certain

indefinite number of Believers, called and impower'd thereunto, not by their Gifts and Abilities as Christians in common, but by a particular signal Donation superadded, given and left, first by Christ to his Apostles, and from them in Succession devolved on the Bi∣shops and Pastors of the Church, in whom it now remains, who alone have the Power of its conveyance, and on whomsoever it is they shall lay their hands, together with the offices of Prayer, or by any other outward Symbol, overt Act or Testimony, which they shall use to evidence the Deputation, transfer it un∣to, these shall receive this Power of the Holy Ghost, be thorowly enabled for the transa∣cting betwixt God and Man, the things that belong to Man's Eternity.

[§. IV] THE design of this present Discourse is, to take away the two former, and establish the latter, to make it evident upon a just Enqui∣ry, and certain Demonstration, That all Church-Power was designed by Christ, and actually left by his Apostles only to Church-Officers, the Order of the Gospel-Priesthood, the Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons, to be separated on purpose and successively instated in such the Jurisdiction and Government, by such of themselves that had before received, and were fully invested with it; and this like other Successions, to continue and be so ma∣naged, till the End cometh, and the Kingdom be delivered up to the Father. So that the general Heads I shall insist upon, will be these Three.

1. That this Power is not in the People or Christians in common.

2. That it is not in the Prince or Secular Government.

3. That it is in the Bishops and Pastors of the Church of Christ, a Power and Offices pe∣culiarly theirs, as to the execution, with its special force and Laws, reaching to all that come to Heaven by Christ Jesus, and as not derived from, so no ways thwarting or inter∣fering with the Civil Government. And all this, as suitable to the received Faith and Polity of the Church in the best Ages of it, down from Christ and his Apostles to us ward; so it agreeing with the particular Esta∣blishments of the Laws of our Kingdom made for the owning and defence of our Christia∣nity, and also with the Religion of the same received and professed in our Church since the Reformation.