322 THE ABSOLUTE seers, and rulers, (as Scripture bids you,) and yet to learn of them but what you list, or to deny them leave to teach or advise you, further than they receive particular warrant and direction from yourselves. Should our assembly limit all their ministerial advice to the warrant and direction of parliament, and not extend it to the warrant and directions of Christ, would they not become the servants and pleasers of men? If you do not your best to set up all thegovernment of Christ, even that in and properto his church, as well as that which is over them, and for them, men may well think it is your own seats, and not Christ's, that you wouldadvance. I would ál1 the magistrates in England did well consider that Christ bath been teaching them this seven years, that their own peace or honors shall not be set up before his gospel and govern- ment; and that they do but tire themselves in vain in such at- tempts ; then they would learn to read my. text with the vulgar, Apprehendite disciplinam. And if the decisive power ofthe min- istry be doubtful, yet at least they would set up their nunciative in its vigor. Christ will rule England either as subjects or as rebels ; and all that kings and states dogain by opposing his rule will not add one cubit to the stature of their greatness.. Yet do I not understand, by.the government of Christ, a rigid conformity to the model of this or that party, or faction, with a violent extirpa- tion of every dissenter. It is the ignorant part of divines, (alas! such there are,) who, with the simple fellow in Erasmus, do ex- pound Paul's hcereticum hominem devita, i. e. de vita tolle. It is the essentials, and not the accidentals of discipline that I speak of: and if some disengaged standers-by be not mistaken, who have the advantage by standing out of the dust of contention, each party bath some of these essentials, and the worst is nearer the truth than his adversary is aware of: and were not the crowd and noise so great that there is no hope of being heard, one would think it should be ,possible to reconcile them all. However, shall the work be undone while each party striveth to have the doing of it? I was afraid when I read the beginning and end of this controversy in France. Tne learned Ramus pleadeth for popular church government in the synods; they rejected it as an unwarrantable novelty; the contention grew sharp, till the Parisian massacre silenced the difference. And must our differences have so sharp a cure? Will nothing unite disjoined Christians but their owl blood? God forbid. But in the mean time, while we quarrel, the work standeth still. Some would haveall the workers of ini- quity now taken out of the kingdom of Christ, forgetting that the angels must take them out at last ; Matt. xiii. Some ministers think as Myconius did, when he was called to the ministry, by a vision leading him into a cornfield, and bidding him reap : he r
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