Churches; constituting him superior to all kings and magistrates, the source of their dominion, the judge of all persons in all spiritual causes, and the disposer of all their temporal things in order to a spiritual good; attributing to him the properties of the Deity; addressing him by divine titles; and alleging that it would be idolatry to disobey his commands, and that, if he should err by commanding sins or forbidding virtues, yet the Church would be bound to believe that the vices were good, and the virtues evil :—

If, in a jealous preference of her own fancied preeminence and prerogative, she were to excommunicate all other national churches, who did not acknowledge and submit to her assumed supremacy and infallibility; and denounce them as false and heretical; and lay them under a ban of solemn anathema and execration; and deny them to have the means of salvation, and the exercise of an apostolical and lawful ministry :

If she were to arrogate to herself dominion over the faith of all Christians, and assert a power, not only of declaring new articles of faith, but of making new symbols and creeds, and imposing them as necessary to salvation; and if, in pursuance of such power, she were to prescribe a method of salvation which Christ and his Apostles never taught; to the articles of faith, which she professes for the guidance of her members, as

being those which were delivered by the Apostles, and believed by the primitive Church, annexing other articles, and binding them upon the belief of men as containing the true Catholick faith, out of which no man can be saved: articles, not known to the Apostles and first Christians, “fond things, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of God 1:"

1

If, instead of preaching the holy Scriptures, as containing all things necessary to salvation, she were to take another rule and canon for her teach ing; affirming that "there is not expressly contained in Scripture all necessary doctrine, either concerning faith or manners," and charging, that "traditions be received with no less piety and veneration than the books of Scripture" thus. "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men;" fathering upon the God of heaven the weak conceptions of a human wit; fastening upon® Him those things which He never wrote, and weakening the authority, and denying the sufficiency, of what He hath written; overlaying the doctrine of evangelical truth with a burden of human imaginations; disordering and innovating upon the Christian religion, which, like its great and glorious Founder, is "the same yesterday, to

1 Art. xxii.

1 2 Matt. xv. 9.

day, and for ever" "making the word of God of none effect: through her traditions," and derogating from the prerogative of Christ, who alone is "the Author and Finisher of our faith 3:"

1:

If, instead of duly ministering the sacraments with decency and order, and to edification *, "according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same," so that her children may "worthily receive" and "duly use "" them, she were to cause them by her mode of ministration to become occasions of superstition and idolatry, the one by being mingled with many fond and idle ceremonies, the other by being "carried about, lifted up, gazed upon, and worshipped;" or were to deem of them in such a way, as to "overturn the very principles of nature, and the established order of things," " to be repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, to overthrow the nature of a sacrament, to give occasion to many superstitions," and to depreciate at the same time, or nullify the value of the Redeemer's sacrifice, and become the cause of "blasphemous, fables and dangerous deceits ";" or were to dispense them with such limitations, as to withhold from her people one of the sacra

9

Bp. Hall's "No peace with Rome,” ix. 63.

mental elements at the Holy Communion of

66

Christ's body and blood; thus altering and mutilating the last institution of her Saviour; sacrilegiously robbing God's people of one half of that heavenly provision, which the Saviour left for his last and dearest legacy to his Church for ever;" on the one hand, admitting communion in both kinds to have been the ordinance and commandment of Christ, the practice of the Apostles and primitive Christians, and for many ages the undeviating custom of the ancient Fathers and Bishops of the Church, yet nevertheless, on the other hand, boldly annulling by a solemn decree such communion, and threatening ejection and punishment upon such hereticks as should stubbornly oppose the decree :-

If, lastly, she were so to magnify the office of her ministers, as, by an inversion of the apostolical maxim, to give them "dominion over the faith " of their people, instead of being "helpers of their joy" to sanction them in withholding from the people their Christian privilege of "searching and knowing the holy Scriptures 3," and their privilege, as rational and responsible beings, of exercising their understanding in judging of them; and to constitute their ministers the sole unerring arbi

1 Bp. Hall's "Dissuasive from Popery," ix. 19.

2

* 2 Cor. i. 24.

3

Acts xvii. 11. 2 Tim. iii. 15.

ters of what they shall read, and what they shall believe: or, again, were she so to magnify the ministerial office as to usurp the prerogative of God, and to lay an intolerable yoke on the consciences of all men; to give her ministers authority for demanding of every man a compulsory confession of all and singular his sins, with all their circumstances, as necessary by the divine law to his salvation; to give them authority for pronouncing upon every man, as likewise necessary to his salvation, a judicial and authoritative sentence of absolution and forgiveness of sins; and to arrogate to herself, and to every one of her ministers, the power,-(my soul recoils from the thought which my argument constrains me to lay before you)-of creating God, the Creator of all, and offering up the same God before the face of God the Father; of immolating day by day, and offering continually upon the altar, for a true, proper, propitiatory sacrifice, the same Saviour, the same identical victim, who once offered himself upon the cross; and of causing to be received by the teeth and mouth of believers and unbelievers indiscriminately, and of exposing withal to other the vilest indignities, the true, real, substantial body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:

If now in these particulars, which I have been