main reason, I suppose, why, in a particular dispute, he goes so far back as to give a long account of the original of laws in general, their several kinds, and their distinct and contrary natures.-But the best comment on this puritan principle are their actions, when in power. They once had that power-Their use of it is well known.

P. 54. [E]. After all this, one would not have expected to find the following paragraph, in the fourth volume of the late bishop of London's Sermons, ás the last result of his thoughts on this question, though they were the first in which he had been brought up." If the FATHER OF A FAMILY has "his authority from God, and rules not only over "his own children, but the servants and creatures "of the Almighty, and ought therefore to have a cont cern for God and religion; is the case of the maGISTRATE different? Are not his subjects also the servants and creatures of God? And is he not the "minister and vicegerent of God, and therefore "bound, IN THE FIRST PLACE, to have a regard to "his honour, who is the common master of him and "his servants." p. 377, 378.

All this is so loosely expressed, that without returning to the bishop's original principles, one can hardly divine what he would be at. For did any magistrate, who believed a God and his government, ever hesitate to have in the first place a regard to God's honour? Our duty to God ever taking place of the two other branches of morality, those which regard our neighbour and ourselves. Or did any subject ever quarrel with the magistrate on account of that preference? We must conclude therefore, that the bishop, in this paragraph, would insinuate (for, at this time of day,

no

no man, who had regard to his own character, would venture to do more) that religion, as such, is properly within the jurisdiction of the magistrate, as such. A long contested question; and which, this chapter is employed to confute.

Taking this to be the bishop's meaning, let us see how he supports his position. THE FATHER Of a FAMILY (says his lordship) having his authority from God, to rule not only over his own children but the servants and creatures of the Almighty, ought to have a concern for God and religion. THE MAGISTRATE'S COMMISSION IS THE SAME: therefore the magistrate is in the first place to take care of their religion. The argument, we see, supposes, that the office of father and magistrate is the same, and derived from the same root and original. If this be not true, the argument falls to the ground. But no man, unless he be a follower of Folmar, and a maintainer of the divine hereditary right of kings, will pretend to say that PATERNITY and MONARCHY are equally derived from the same source. Those who have exploded the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance tell another story. They say, that fathers and patriarchs must remain fathers and patriarchs; and can never either ripen or degenerate into kings, as coming from a very different stock: that these latter arose from compact, and were the creatures of the people: that the will of God, discoverable by natural reason, gave the immediate right to FATHERS; and that the will of man, discoverable by human actions, gave the immediate right to KINGS; that both, indeed, are the ordinance of God, as all things are which have a natural tendency to better and improve humanity. But, to infer from thence, that the rights annexed to one ordinance of God belong to another of his ordinances VOL. VII.

G

(though

(though of quite a different nature and original), is illogical and inconclusive. Nay even supposing that paternity and monarchy were both the ordinance of God in the same and supreme sense of an ordinance, immediately and extraordinarily revealed from God, it would by no means follow, that the offices of father and of king were the same; nor consequently the administration of those offices. The English monarch, by the selfsame ordinance, commissions a chief-justice and a captain-general. Has the chief-justice therefore a right to preside in a court-martial, or the captain-general, in the king's bench? With just as much reason as the supreme magistrate directs and orders the religion of God's creatures, amongst his subjects, because a father of a family directs and orders the religion of God's creatures, amongst his children. As in God's house in heaven there are many mansions for those who deserve them; so in God's household here on earth there are many offices for those who are capable of discharging them; in which, each has his distinct, and not one common business, though the end of all be the same, the benefit of mankind. But to suppose this end may be best obtained by each society's aiming at all the good they are, by any means, capable of promoting, is so idle a fancy, that it would be the ready way to do no good at all. Since each society would clash with another, and all of them remain unfit for what they undertake.

P. 65. [F]. In the quarrel between Boniface the VIIIth and Philip the Fair of France, concerning the bounds of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Pope roundly affirms, that to deny the temporal to be subject to the spiritual, is falling into the Manichean heresy, or the admission of its two principles. But his holiness

23

holiness might trust to his logic at a time when the learning of the whole body of the French nobility was in so deplorable a state, that the College of Cardinals, writing to them on this occasion in Latin, advises them (with a true Irish kindness) to get some honest man to translate the letter, for them, into French.

P. 72. [G]. Archbishop Laud may be called the father of this sect: and though he made a notable use of the King's supremacy to carry on his schemes, yet that he held the supreinacy to be no better than an usurpation, appears pretty plainly from these words of his DIARY, where speaking of his having procured the Lord High Treasurer's Staff for Juxton, Bishop of London, he goes on thus-No churchman had it since Hen. VII. time. I pray God bless him, to carry it so that the Church may have honour, and the king and the state service and contentment by it. And now IF THE CHURCH WILL NOT HOLD UP THEMSELVES UNDER GOD I can do no more. A remarkable passage in Sir Philip Warwick, who wrote altogether in favour of Laud and his. party, will justify the interpretation I have put on these words of the diary." He [Laud] was a great

assertor of church-authority, instituted by Christ " and his Apostles and as primitively practised; (which "notwithstanding he really and freely acknowledged "subject unto the secular authority :) therefore he

carefully endeavoured to preserve the jurisdiction "which the church anciently exercised, before the "secular authority owned her. At least so much "thereof as the law of this our realm had applied to

our circumstances; which our common lawyers "dayly struck at." Memoires, p. 79.

G 2

P. 72.

P. 72. [H]. The SARACEN CALIFES, from sovereign princes, became, as their empire decayed, only sovereign pontiffs. The ROMAN POPES, from sovereign pontiffs, became, as their religion degenerated, sovereign princes. The reason of this contrary route was this. Christianity, as it degenerated, partook more and more of the spirit of Mahometanism: but Mahometanism never admitted of the spirit of Christianity; which separates the two characters of PRINCE and PRIEST; assigns to each his distinct province; and gives to each his lawful due.

P. 73. [I]. Hobbes is commonly supposed to be an enemy to all religion, especially the Christian. But it is observable, that in his attacks upon it (if at least he intended his chapter of the Christian Commonwealth in the LEVIATHAN, for an attack) he has taken direct contrary measures from those of Bayle, Collins, Tyndal, Bolingbroke, and all the other writers against Revelation. They endeavoured to shew the GOSPELSYSTEM as unreasonable as their extreme malice could, make it; he as reasonable as his admirable wit could represent it. The schemes of CHURCH DISCIPLINE likewise, which they and he severally recommended, were by an odd fatality as different as their representations of the DOCTRINE; but in the reverse as to their qualities. They, all of them contended for the most unbounded toleration: He, for the most rigorous conformity. He seems, indeed, to have formed his plan of ecclesiastical government before he turned his thoughts to the Christian doctrine: and therefore as his politics had inforced an absolute submission to the Civil Magistrate in spirituals, he contrived, in order

to