REASONS AGAINST THE ROMISH NOTION OF UNITY. 395 exercise charity, and to maintain peace toward each other, and to promote each other's good in order to the future happiness in heaven. All these kinds of unity plainly agree to the universal church of Christ; but the question is, Whether the church is also necessarily, by the design and appointment of God, to be, in way of external policy, under one singular government or jurisdiction of any kind, so as a kingdom or commonwealth are united under the command of one monarch or one senate? That thechurch is capable of such an union is not the controversy; that it is possible it should be so united, supposing it mayhappen that all Christians may be reduced to one nation or one civil regi- ment [government], or that several nations spontaneously may con- federate and combine themselves into one ecclesiastical common- wealth, administeredby thesame spiritual rulers andjudges, according to the same laws, I do not question; that when in a manner all Christendom consisted of subjects to the Roman empire, the church then arrived near such an unity, I do not at present contest; but that such an union of all Christians is necessary, or that it was ever instituted by Christ, I cannot grant; and for my refusal of that opinion I shall assign divers reasons:-- 1. This being a point of great consideration, and trenching upon practice, which every one were concerned to know, and there being frequent occasions to declare it, yet the holy Scripture nowhere ex- presses or intimates such a kind of unity; which is a sufficient proof that it has no firm ground. We may say of it, as St Augustine says of thechurch itself, "I will not that the holy church be demonstrated from human reasonings, but from the divine oracles."1 St Paul particularly, in divers epistles, designedly treating about the unity of the church, together with other points of doctrine neigh- bouring thereon, and amply describing it, does not yet imply any such unity then extant, or designed to be. Eph. iv.; 1 Cor. xii.; Rom. xii. ; Gal. iii. 28. He mentions and urges the unity of spirit, of faith, of charity, of peace, of relation to our Lord, of communion in devotions and offices of piety; but concerning any union under one singular visible go- vernment or polity he is silent. He says, " One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all;"not, one monarch, or one senate, or one sanhedrim: which is a pregnant sign that none such wag then instituted, otherwise he could not have slipped over a point so very material and pertinent to his discourse. 2. By the apostolical history it may appear that the apostles, in ' Nolo humanis documentis, sed divinis oraculis sanctam ecclesiam demonstrari. dug. de Unit., cap. iii.
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