BAXTER'S POEMS. 149 On Catholic communion they lay, Not only all men's duty, but salvation, For schism rends men from the church, say they, And so from Christ, and therefore brings dam nation. Yet that's man's duty which they sehism call; To own no human, universal king, No legislative power over all, In councils, pope, or any human thing. None's capable to rule all, but the Lord, Give church or state, law, judgment, or defence; Man's universal sovereignty's abhorr'd, By nature, reason, and experience. Among the mad, those princes monsters are Who subjects be to this church-sovereign's claim; And yet with scorn and just disdain would hear, An universal civil sovereign's name. When certainly it is a harder thing, 'fo rule all earth by the church power and word, Than for the wisest parliament or king, To rule the whole world by the civil sword. Thus they impossible communion make, And yet damn all that do it not observe : None can tell whom for sovereign we must take, Nor which the laws are from which none must swerve. Must pope or councils, this great sovereign be, Is 't monarchy, or aristocracy? Or is it mix'd, and must they both agree, Or is it the diffused democracy ?
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