minous laws of their own, and cut off and condemn all the children of God, that cannot believe that it is lawful to obey them.

And though the ignorant think that the claim of universal legislation and judgment, in the universal church and general councils, be no service to the domination of particular clergymen, no, nor to any, (seeing there never will be a general council,) they understand not the mystery of iniquity, and mistake. We have English writers that have told them, 1. That indeed power is first given to the body, (fine doctrine for royalists,) but by the body it is given to the prelates to use for them. 2. That as a general council hath the supreme power, so the prelates under them have the inferior ruling power, and the executive in the intervals of councils. 3. That as councils represent the church in sovereignty, so every bishop is by his office, the true representative of the clergy of his diocese, and every metropolitan the representative of his province, and every patriarch of his patriarchate; and then are not the patriarchs (at least with the metropolitans,) universal rulers in such intervals? 4. And the pope is the patriarch of the West, and hath a primacy in the church universal, and must be confest to be' principium unitas catholicæ,' and say some, to be the president of councils. 5. To which others add, that it belongs only to the president to call councils, and to judge which are lawful, without whose call they are so far from binding us, that they are themselves but unlawful routs. And what would you have more?

But what is all this to the poor priests? What? Why 6. The people know not what the volumes of councils say, and it is the priests (or nobody) that must tell it them, (both what their exposition of Scripture is, and what their own adtional laws are,) without which they cannot be obeyed. So that indeed the people's faith is ultimately resolved into the authority of the priest, who tells them what the bishop saith, who tells them what the metropolitan and his synod saith, who tells them what the chief patriarch and a general council saith, who tell them determinatively what Christ and the Scripture saith and meaneth.

But what is this to councils when there are none? Yes, 7. Those that are past and gone, have left all those binding

laws by which the present bishops as an aristocracy must govern all the Christian world.

But are not they for monarchy in the state? How come they then to plead for a sovereign aristocracy over the catholic church, and how come even the French clergy to be for the power of a church parliament above the pope? I cannot answer that; let the pope and they debate it.

But I wonder that archbishop Laud should be for the derivation of all power from the body, as Richard Hooker is. See Dr. Stillingfleet's Defence of him, p.544, 545, &c. "No body collective, whensoever it assembled itself, did ever give more power to the representing body of it, than a binding power upon itself and all particulars; nor ever did it give this power, otherwise than with this reservation in nature, that it would call again and reform, and if need were, abrogate any law or ordinances upon just cause made evident, that the representing body had failed in trust or truth. And this power no body collective, ecclesiastical or civil, can put out of itself, or give away to a parliament or council, or call it what you will, that represents it. The power which a council hath to order, settle and define differences arising concerning faith, it hath not by any immediate institution of Christ, but it was prudently taken up by the church from the apostles' example."

I confess that the generality of politicians and lawyers, heathens, Papists, and Protestants go much this way, as to civil government, and say that the 'majestas personalis' is in the king or senate, but the majestas realis' in the body which giveth the organical power, and on just cause may take it away. It is no honour to be singular in politics, and I have said enough of this elsewhere, (Christ. Direct. p. I.) But if it be the body of the whole church on earth that must give church officers and councils their power, and recal it when there is cause, if ever the whole Christian world meet together to vote it, when it cometh to polling, we will give both the monarchical and the aristocratical conciliary Papists three for one, to try who hath the power given by the body. But while two or three parts do already disown almost all their councils, the case is decided. But if an old council's heresies, errors, or tyranny can be invalidated only -by a new one that is truly general, or a new one as papal as

the last, we confess that Trent canons are like to be the law to the end of the world.

But again, what is it that maketh so many of the laity serve the popish prelate's universal claim, or keep up the destructive enmity and divisions of the Christian world? A stranger would think that it were chiefly caused by some great contrariety of real interests, or that one party adhered to some principles or practices, which were already hurtful to the other's rights; while both were serious for Christianity. But it is become by long experience notorious, that all the Christian world's calamitous divisions are principally from the old enmity between the woman's and the serpent's seed, and that all is but the prosecution of that which their first patriarch Cain began; exemplified after in the discrimination of the children of men, and the sons of God, and in Esau and Jacob, Ishmael and Isaac, and so down to the days of the apostles. And saith Paul, as he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now." Among us it is notorious, that if we knew how to cure men of the radical enmity of the flesh against the Spirit, and of a carnal mind's averseness to God and serious godliness, the rest of our differences were never like to continue our wounds and cruel factions.

In families you may hear that this is the fundamental difference. Husband and wife, parents and children, masters and servants, upon the mere account of serious godliness, do live like enemies, that are impatient of each other. If the husband be ungodly, the wife, children, or servants, that have but a care of their salvation, are still under his restraints, or frowns, or scorns. This praying, (especially if it be without book,) so much preaching and hearing, yea, any serious talk of God, or heaven, or Scripture, is a troublesome weariness to him; and he tells them it is but hypocrisy, or more ado than needs. If any compassionately tell him of the evil of his swearing, or tippling, or profaneness, he tells them they are precise Puritans or fanatics, and worse than he. If they will needs hear sermons, he will have them go but to some cold or ignorant preacher, or one that will please him with a calumny or scorn at Puritans, or that will say as he doth, that this stir for salvation, and meddling so much with Scripture and religion, is but proud, self-conceit

fanaticism. In a word, it is serious preaching, and hearing, and reading God's word; serious praying, and preparation for the sacrament; serious discourse of the state of their souls, and preparation for death, judgment, and eternity; serious fearing and avoiding sin, and speaking against the sin of others, that is the common eyesore and troubler of the world, which they secretly hate, and cannot bear with in their families, in their neighbours, in magistrates, in ministers or people.

And because it easeth their minds by vent, and by keeping up some hopes that they may be saved without this serious godliness themselves, they cherish a conceit that the persons that herein differ from them are as bad, if not much worse than others; and gladly hear those that slander and deride them. Such company, such pamphlets, such sermons please them. And to make them odious, they have for them some contemptuous scornful nickname; which, though it be of no signification, is as effectual as the truest charge. Among the Roman sects, do but call a man a heretic or schismatic, a Lutheran, a Calvinist, a Zuinglian; and elsewhere do but call him a sectary, a schismatic, a Puritan, a Calvinist, a Nonconformist, an Independent, a Presbyterian, a Roundhead, a Fanatic, a Whig, and it serveth the turn as well as if you had proved him a proud hypocrite, or a rebel. And there be among the real schismatics also some persons, that if you do but call a man Episcopal, a Conformist, an Arminian, a Church-of-England-man, that goeth to the common-prayer, they think that he must needs be a temporizer, graceless or dangerously unsound.

And thus the miseries of the land are continued and increased. But because the spirit of Cain is the grand incendiary, and the enmity against serious holiness throughout all the world, is the principal cause of divisions, hatred, wars and bloodshed, I will here annex many reasons which, with men that have any reason left them, should cure this malignant enmity to holiness, if men will but soberly consider them.

I have said so much to such already, especially in my "Saints' Rest," "Now or Never," my " Family Book," and "A Saint or a Brute," that I cannot do this work again without repeating much that is said. But seeing all that doth not serve, and the ulcer breaketh out more dangerously than

ever, till it come to a noli me tangere,' we must continue some hope and use of means; and if we lay on fresh plaisters of the old materials, while only new books are by such regarded, we are bound to do our best. It is but so much labour lost; and it is not utterly lost to ourselves, while we have peace of conscience in God's acceptance.

But being sure to be misreported when I have done my best to be understood, that I be not guilty of it, I will first shew what I mean by serious godliness, and next what I mean by malignity or enmity to serious godliness.

CHAPTER II.

Whom I mean by Godly Persons, and whom by Malignant Enemies to Godliness.

By Godliness I do not mean, 1. Any superstition, or making religions, or religious duties which God never made, and extolling these, and the party that are for them. God hath made us religious work enough. Could we do that well, we need no more. Religion, so far as it is made by men, is no religion, but a contradiction or equivocation; for religion is our obligation and duty to God, and conscience of it. Could I be for superstition, or more religion than God hath made us, I might be for all the new religions of Rome, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carthusians, Jesuits, Oratorians, and all the rest. And I might be for their works of supererogation, their massings, worshipping bread, angels, dead saints, images, their pilgrimages, relics, and all their pretended traditions and councils, their new-made church-laws, and I should know no end.

And 2. By godliness I mean not any singular, odd opinion differing from the Scripture, and making a sect, or any error whatsoever; nor any opinion which is contrary to any thing which the whole church on earth did ever hold as ne cessary to salvation or communion.

Nor 3. Do I mean any truth or duty of inferior moment, which only makes to the wellbeing of a Christian, though this be an inferior part of godliness; at least not