Afterwards the presbyters,as the flocks of Christ increased,assembling to consider what they should teach,and thereby obliging themselves to teach nothing against the decrees of their assemblies,made it to be thought the people were thereby obliged to follow their doctrine,and,when they refused,refused to keep them company (that was then called excommunication),not as being infidels,but as being disobedient:and this was the first knot upon their liberty.And the number of presbyters increasing,the presbyters of the chief city or province got themselves an authority over the parochial presbyters,and appropriated to themselves the names of bishops:and this was a second knot on Christian liberty.Lastly,the bishop of Rome,in regard of the Imperial City,took upon him an authority (partly by the wills of the emperors themselves,and by the title of Pontifex Maximus,and at last when the emperors were grown weak,by the privileges of St.Peter)over all other bishops of the Empire:which was the third and last knot,and the whole synthesis and construction of the pontifical power.
And therefore the analysis or resolution is by the same way,but beginneth with the knot that was last tied;as we may see in the dissolution of the preterpolitical Church government in England.
First,the power of the popes was dissolved totally by Queen Elizabeth;and the bishops,who before exercised their functions in right of the Pope,did afterwards exercise the same in right of the Queen and her successors;though by retaining the phrase of jure divino they were thought to demand it by immediate right from God:and so was untied the first knot.After this,the Presbyterians lately in England obtained the putting down of Episcopacy:and so was the second knot dissolved.And almost at the same time,the power was taken also from the Presbyterians:and so we are reduced to the independency of the primitive Christians to follow Paul,or Cephas,or Apollos,every man as he liketh best:which if it be without contention,and without measuring the doctrine of Christ by our affection to the person of his minister (the fault which the Apostle reprehended in the Corinthians),is perhaps the best:first,because there ought to be no power over the consciences of men,but of the word itself,working faith in every one,not always according to the purpose of them that plant and water,but of God Himself,that giveth the increase.And secondly,because it is unreasonable in them,who teach there is such danger in every little error,to require of a man endued with reason of his own to follow the reason of any other man,or of the most voices of many other men,which is little better than to venture his salvation at cross and pile.Nor ought those teachers to be displeased with this loss of their ancient authority:for there is none should know better than they that power is preserved by the same virtues by which it is acquired;that is to say,by wisdom,humility,clearness of doctrine,and sincerity of conversation;and not by suppression of the natural sciences,and of the morality of natural reason;nor by obscure language;nor by arrogating to themselves more knowledge than they make appear;nor by pious frauds;nor by such other faults as in the pastors of God's Church are not only faults,but also scandals,apt to make men stumble one time or other upon the suppression of their authority.
But after this doctrine,that the Church now militant is the kingdom of God spoken of in the Old and New Testament,was received in the world,the ambition and canvassing for the offices that belong thereunto,and especially for that great office of being Christ's lieutenant,and the pomp of them that obtained therein the principal public charges,became by degrees so evident that they lost the inward reverence due to the pastoral function:insomuch as the wisest men of them that had any power in the civil state needed nothing but the authority of their princes to deny them any further obedience.For,from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal,by pretence of succession to St.Peter,their whole hierarchy,or kingdom of darkness,may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies;that is,to the old wives'fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits,and the feats they play in the night.And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion,he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire,sitting crowned upon the grave thereof:for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power.
The language also which they use,both in the churches and in their public acts,being Latin,which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world,what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?
The fairies in what nation soever they converse have but one universal king,which some poets of ours call King Oberon;but the Scripture calls Beelzebub,prince of demons.The ecclesiastics likewise,in whose dominions soever they be found,acknowledge but one universal king,the Pope.
The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly fathers.The fairies are spirits and ghosts.Fairies and ghosts inhabit darkness,solitudes,and graves.The ecclesiastics walk in obscurity of doctrine,in monasteries,churches,and churchyards.
The ecclesiastics have their cathedral churches,which,in what town soever they be erected,by virtue of holy water,and certain charms called exorcisms,have the power to make those towns,cities,that is to say,seats of empire.The fairies also have their enchanted castles,and certain gigantic ghosts,that domineer over the regions round about them.
The fairies are not to be seized on,and brought to answer for the hurt they do.So also the ecclesiastics vanish away from the tribunals of civil justice.
