116 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. confiscation or imprisonment, is no fitter to bea member of aChris. tian church, than a corpse is to be a member of a corporation. It is true they claim not this power as juredivino; but no more do the prelates, thoughthe writ de excommunicato capiendo is the life of all their censures. But both parties too much debase the ma- gistrate, by making him their mere executioner; whereas he is the judge wherever he is the executioner, and is to try each cause at his own bar, before he be obliged to punish any. They alsocor- rupt the discipline of Christ, by mixing it with secular force. They reproach the keys or ministerial power, as if it were a leaden sword, and not worth a straw,unless the magistrate's sword enforce it. What, then, did the primitive church for threehundred years? And worst of all, they corrupt the church, by forcing in the rabble of the unfit and the unwilling ; and thereby tempt many godly Christians to schisms and dangerous separations." " Till magis- trates keep the sword themselves, and learn to deny it to every angry clergyman whowould do his own work by it, and leave them to their own weapons the word and spiritual keys and valeant quantum valere possunt the church will never have unity and peace. "3. And I disliked some of the Presbyterians, that they were not tender enough to dissenting brethren ; but to much against liberty, as others. were too much for it; and thought by votes and numbers to do that which love and reason should have done." A fourth objection, in Baxter's mind, against the Presbyterians, was, that, " in their practice, they would have so settled it, that a worshiping church and a governed church should nowhere be the same thing; but ten or twelve worshiping churches should have made one governedchurch, which prepared the way to the diocesan frame." His objections to the system of the Independentswere, in his own words, " 1. They made too light of ordination. "2. They also had their office of lay-eldership. "3. They, were commonly stricter about the qualification of church members than scripture, reason, or the practice of the uni- versal church, would allow." "4. I disliked, also, the lamentable tendency of this their way to divisions and subdivisions, and the nourishing 'ofheresies and sects. 5. But aboveall, I disliked that most ofthemmade the people by majority of votes to be church governors, in excommunications, absolutions; etc., which Christ bath made tobe an actof office ; and so theygoverned their governors and themselves. " 6. Also they too much exploded synods, refusing them as stated, and admitting them but 011 some extraordinary occasions.
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