134 PAPAL SUCCESSION INDEFENSIBLE. authority, it is requisite to showthe power demised by him to be, ac- cording to God's institution and intent, immutable and indefectible; for power built upon the like, but far more certain principles, has in course of times, and byworldly changes, been quite lost, or conveyed into other channelsthan those wherein it was first put, and that irre- coverably, so that it cannot any wise be retrieved or reduced into the first order For instance, Adam was by God constituted universal sovereign of mankind, and into that power his eldest son of right succeeded; and so it ofright should have been continually propagated. Yet soon that power failed, or was diverted into other courses, theworld being cantonized into several dominions; so that the heir- at-law, among all the descendants of Adam, cannot so easily be found as a needle in a bottle ofhay. He probably is a subject, and perhaps is a peasant. Somight St Peter be monarch of thechurch, and the pope might succeed him; yet, by revolutions of things, by several defaults and incapacities in himself, by divers obstructions incident, by forfeiture upon encroaching on other men's rights,according to that maxim of a great pope, " He loseth his own whocoveteth more than his due,' his power might be clipped, might be transplanted, might utterly decay and fail. To such fatalities other powers are subject; norcan that of the pope be exempt from them, as otherwhere we shall more largely declare. 15. Indeed, that God intended his church should perpetually sub- sist united in any one political frame of government, is a principle which they assume and build upon, but can nowise prove. Nor, in- deed, is it true; for, If the unity of the church designed and instituted by God were only an unity of faith, of charity, of peace, of fraternal communion and correspondence between particular societies and pastors, then in vain it is to seek for the subject and seat of universal jurisdiction. Now, that God did not intend any other unity than such as those specified we have good reason to judge, and shall, we hope, other- where sufficiently prove.* 16. We may consider that really the sovereign power, such as it is pretended, has often failed, there having been, for long spaces of time, no Roman bishops at all, upon several accounts; which is a sign that the church may subsist without it. As, (1.) When Rome was desolated by the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards. ' Propria perdit qui indebita concupiscit. P. Leo L, Ep.lia. ' This the author has done at length, in his "Discourse concerningthe Unityof the Church:" En.
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