A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics

6. In this respect, therefore, a ruler may have so much power as may induce on the subject an obligation to obey, and yet not so much as may justify his commands before God, nor save himself from divine punishment.

I add this so distinctly, lest any should misapply Mr. Rich. Hooker's doctrine aforesaid, Eccl. Pol. lib. viii. p. 223, 224. "As for them that exercise power altogether against order, though the kind of power which they have may be of God, yet is their exercise thereof against God, and therefore not of God, otherwise than by permission, as all injustice is. – Usurpers of power, whereby we do not mean them that by violence have aspired unto places of highest authority, but them that use more authority than they did ever receive in form and manner, before mentioned. – Such usurpers thereof, as in the exercise of their power, do more than they have been authorized to do, cannot in conscience bind any man to obedience."

Lest any should gather hence that they are never bound in conscience to obey their parents, their king, their pastors, in any point wherein they exercise more power than God gave them, I thought meet to speak more exactly to that point, which needed this distinguishing. For the ground is sure that There is no power but of God;383 and that God hath given no man power against himself, his laws and service; but yet there are many cases in which God bindeth children and subjects to obey their superiors, in such matters as they did sinfully command.

7. It greatly concerneth all sober christians therefore to be well studied in the law of God, that we may certainly know what those things are which God hath absolutely forbidden us to do, whoever command them, and to distinguish them from things that depend on mutable accidents; that as the three witnesses and Daniel, Dan. iii. vi. we may be true to God whatever we suffer for it; and yet may obey men in all that is our duty to them.

Thus the apostles knew that no man had power from God to silence them, or persecute them for the gospel. Therefore they would not obey those that forbad them to preach; and yet they would appear before any magistrate that commanded them, and obey their summons; and so we may do even to a usurper, or a private man.

8. The principal and most notable case, in which we must obey when a ruler sinfully commandeth, is, when the matter which he commandeth is not such as is either forbidden us by God, or out of the verge of his place and calling at all to meddle with and command, nor yet such as is destructive of our duty to God; but such as in general belongeth to his office to determine of according to God's general rules; but he misseth it in the manner and goeth against those rules; yet not so far as to destroy the duty we owe to God, or the end of it.

For instance, it is not in the ruler's power to determine whether there shall be preaching or none, true doctrine or false, &c. But it is in his power to regulate the circumstances of time, place, &c. (next to be recited). Now if he do these to order, unity, and edification, I will obey him formally and fully for conscience sake. If he so do it as is destructive to the end, (as is aforesaid,) as to say, You shall meet only at twenty miles' distance, or only at midnight, &c. I will obey him no further than necessity and the common good requireth me. If he do it only with a tolerable inconvenience, (as to say, You shall meet no where but in the open fields, &c.) I will obey for conscience sake, as I am in general a subject bound to honour the magistrate; but not as he nameth an unmeet circumstance, in that respect my obedience shall be but material.

I need not handle it as a distinct question, Whether pastors are to be believed or obeyed any further than they show a word of God revealing and commanding the particular thing? Divine faith and obedience is one thing, and human is another. 1. If as a preacher he shall say, This is God's word, believe it and obey it as such, you must believe with a human faith that it is liker that he knoweth what he saith, than you do, (unless, (1.) You see evidence; (2.) Or the consent of more credible persons to be against him, and then you are not to believe him at all). Even as a child believeth his teacher in order to learn the things himself, so you are so far to take his word while you are learning to know whether it be so or not. But not to rest in it as certain, nor to take your belief of him and obedience to him, to be a believing and obeying God formally, though a duty.

Quest. CXXXIII. What are the additions or inventions of men which are not forbidden by the word of God (whether by rulers or by private men invented)?

Answ. This is handled under the directions for worship; to which I refer the reader, as also for part of the answer to the former cases. Yet here I shall trouble you with so much repetition, as to say, that,

1. Such inventions and additions are lawful as God hath commanded men (rulers, pastors, parents, or private persons) to make under the regulation of his general laws.

2. All such additions are lawful as are merely subordinate and subservient to God's laws and orders, and not forbidden by him, among the forementioned prohibited additions.

Instances are many. 1. All such modes of a duty as are necessary in genere, or one way or other to be determined of, but left to human prudence as to particulars. As, 1. Whether I shall (this week or month) publish the gospel by speaking, or by writing, or by printing. 2. Whether I shall use this method, or that, or another method in this sermon. 3. Whether I shall use these phrases and words, or other words. 4. Whether I shall use notes for my memory or not. And whether large ones or short ones. 5. Whether I shall be an hour or two in preaching. 6. Whether I shall preach with a loud voice or a low. 7. Whether I shall at this time more endeavour explication or application, comfort or terror, reprehension or direction, &c. All which are to be varied by man's lawful invention according to God's general rules.

2. It is also lawful and needful, that our own invention or our superior's according to God's general laws, do determine of the particular subjects of our office; which Scripture doth not particularly determine of, viz. 1. Scripture telleth not ministers what country, parish, or church they shall bestow their labours in. 2. Nor to how many they shall be a pastor. 3. Nor what text or subject they shall preach on. 4. Nor what singular persons they shall apply comfort, counsel, or terror to, this or that. 5. Nor whom they shall admit to the sacrament (but by the general rule or description). 6. Nor whom they shall openly rebuke or excommunicate. 7. Nor whom they shall absolve. It telleth them not whom the persons be to whom the Scripture character doth belong, in any of these cases. 8. Nor whether the witnesses say truly or falsely who accuse a man. 9. Nor whether the accused be to be taken as guilty of heresy, scandal, or schism, &c.

3. It is also a lawful invention of man, to find, choose, and use, such natural helps, as are useful to further us in the obedience of God's laws, and the practice of his worship, and are not forbidden by him. Yea, in genere they are commanded, and yet never particularly determined of in the Scripture: as, 1. What will clear a preacher's voice, to speak audibly. 2. The advantage of a pulpit to be above the people. 3. The use of spectacles to them that need them to read the Scripture. 4. The translating of the Scriptures into our native language. 5. Which translation of many we shall use in the churches. 6. The printing of the Bible. 7. The dividing it into chapters and verses. 8. The printing of good books, to expound and apply the Scripture; commentaries, sermons, &c. 9. The forms of school exercises, disputations, &c. to prepare students for the ministry; and what books of divinity tutors shall read to their pupils, or every student shall have in his library. 10. The manner and tune of singing psalms in the churches. 11. What version or metre to use, this or that. 12. What form of catechism, (verbal, written, or printed,) to use among many, in the church or family. 13. Whether to pray in the same words often, or in various. 14. Whether to use words of our own composing or invention primarily, or of other men's; and that by direction, persuasion, or command. 15. To use a written or printed form, or neither; to read it on the book, or speak it by memory. 16. To use Scripture forms only, of prayer, praise, psalms and hymns, or those that are of later composure also. 17. To print the Bible and use it with marginal notes, and contents, or without. 18. To baptize in a river, well, pool, or font. 19. To have sponsors or witnesses of the parents' trustiness, and the child's covenant, or not. 20. At how many days old children shall be baptized. 21. Whether they shall be named in baptism, or before, or after. 22. Whether one of the ministers shall be a tutor or teacher to the rest that are younger. 23. How far the rest shall submit their judgments to one that is eldest and ablest, and be ruled by him. 24. Whether there shall be any deaconnesses in the church. 25. Whether a church shall have one minister, two, or more. 26. Who shall be the men. 27. What space of ground shall be the church bounds, for the cohabitation of the members. 28. How many neighbour churches shall make a synod; and which be they. 29. How many members a synod shall consist of. 30. Who shall be president. Or whether any. And who shall gather the votes. 31. Who shall record their acts, as scribe. 32. What messenger shall carry them to the churches. 33. What letters for correspondence and communion shall be written to the churches. 34. When pastors shall remove from one church to another; and to which. 35. Who shall be ordained ministers to preach, baptize, and gather churches. 36. How many the ordainers shall be. 37. Whether there shall be any music by instruments in the church or house, for the praises of God; and what. 38. Who shall lead the psalm. 39. Who shall read. 40. What words the church's profession of faith shall be expressed by. 41. By what signs the church shall signify their consent; whether lifting up the hand, standing up, bowing the head, or by voice, or writing. 42. By what sign or ceremony men shall take an oath; whether lifting up the hand towards heaven, or laying it on a book, or kissing the book, &c. 43. Whether the people at the sacrament sit near the table, or keep farther off. 44. Whether it be put into each person's hand, or they take it themselves. With many more such like.

4. And it is a lawful invention to determine of mere circumstances of time and place which God hath not determined of in Scripture: as, 1. At how many times in the year or week, baptism shall be administered. 2. At what age persons be admitted to the Lord's supper. 3. On what days and hours of the week there shall be lectures, or church assemblies. 4. How oft and when ministers shall catechise and instruct the people privately. 5. On what hour the church shall assemble on the Lord's days, and receive the sacrament. 6. How long prayer, reading, and sermon shall be. 7. At what hour to end the public exercises. 8. At what hours to pray in families or in secret. 9. How often disciplinary meetings shall be held, for the trial of accused members. 10. How often synods shall meet; and how long continue. Of holy days before.

5. The same is to be said for the places of holy exercises. 1. What edifices the church shall have for such uses? 2. In what places they shall be situate? 3. Where the pulpit shall stand? 4. And where the font? 5. And where the table? 6. Where each of the people shall sit? 7. Where synods shall meet? 8. How many temples shall be in a city? &c.

6. The same is to be said of all accidental, subordinate officers; as lecturers, clerks, door-keepers, churchwardens, and many before mentioned.

7. The same is to be said of church utensils; as table, cups, linen, pulpits, fonts, clock, hour-glass, bells, seats, decent habit of clothes, &c.

8. The same may be said of decent gestures, not particularly commanded; as what gesture to preach in, standing or sitting? What gesture to read in? What gesture to hear in? What gesture to sing psalms in? Whether to be covered or bare-headed? In what gesture to receive the Lord's supper? (In which Scripture no more regulateth us, than of the room, the hour of communicating, the number of communicants, the place; in all which Christ's example was not a particular law.)

9. The same may be said of order. 1. Whether the pastor shall begin with prayer, reading, or exhortation? 2. Whether the people shall begin with prayer or ejaculations privately? 3. Whether we shall make but one or two long continued prayers, or many short ones? 4. Whether we shall pray before sermon immediately, and after, in the pulpit or in the reading place? 5. When the psalms shall be said or sung, and how many? 6. How many chapters shall be read? and which and in what order? 7. Whether baptism shall be before, or after, or when? 8. When the catechumens and learners shall be dismissed, and the proper eucharistical church exercises begin? 9. When collections made? &c.

But, O Lord, have compassion on thy scattered flock, who are afflicted and divided by the imperiousness of those pastors, who think it not enough for the exercise of their domination, to promote all thine own holy laws and doctrines, and to make their own canons in all these cases, or such like; but they must needs make more work than all this cometh to, for themselves and for their flocks, even unto those distractions, and dissipations, and fierce persecutions and contentions, which many hundred years have exercised the Greek and Latin churches, and many more throughout the world.

Quest. CXXXIV. What are the mischiefs of unlawful additions in religion?

Answ. Alas! many and great. 1. They tend to dethrone Christ from his sovereignty, and legislative prerogative. 2. And to advance man, blind and sinful man, into his place. 3. And thereby to debase religion, making it but a human or a mixed thing (and it can be no more noble than its author is). 4. And thereby they debase also the church of God, and the government of it, while they make it to be but a human policy, and not divine. 5. They tend to depose God from his authority in men's consciences, and to level or join him there but with man. 6. They tend to men's doubtfulness and uncertainty of their religion; seeing man is fallible, and so may his constitutions be. 7. They tend to drive out all true religion from the world, while man that is so bad is the maker of it; and it may be suspected to be bad, that is made by so bad an author. 8. And it taketh off the fear of God, and his judgment: for it is man that must be feared, so far as man is the maker of the law. And it destroyeth the consolation of believers, which consisteth in the hopes of a reward from God; for he that serveth man, must be rewarded by man; and though they do not exclude God, but join him with themselves, yet this mixture debaseth and destroyeth religion, as the mixture of God and mammon in men's love, and as mixed and debased metals do the sovereign's coin. 9. It hardeneth infidels and hindereth their conversion; for they will reverence no more of our religion than we can prove to be divine: and when they find one part of it to be human, they suspect the rest to be so too, and contemn it all; even as protestants do popery, for the abundance of human trinkets and toys with which we see them exercise and delude their silly followers. 10. It is the great engine of dividing all the churches, and breeding and feeding contentions in the christian world. 11. And because men that will command, will be obeyed, and they that are absolutely subjected to God, will obey none against him, whatever it cost them, (as Dan. iii.; vi.; Heb. xi.; Luke xiv. 26, 33; Matt. v. 10-12,) therefore it hath proved the occasion of bloody persecutions in the churches, by which professed christians draw the guilt of christian blood upon themselves. 12. And hereby it hath dolefully hindered the gospel, while the persecutors have silenced many worthy, conscionable preachers of it. 13. And by this it hath quenched charity in the hearts of both sides, and taught the sufferers and the afflicters to be equally bitter in censuring if not detesting one another. 14. And the infidels seeing these dissensions and bitter passions among christians, deride, and scorn, and hate them all.384 15. Yea, such causes as these in the Latin and Greek churches have engaged not only emperors and princes against their own subjects, so that chronicles and books of martyrs perpetuate their dishonour, as Pilate's name is in the creed; but also have set them in bloody wars among themselves. These have been the fruits, and this is the tendency of usurping Christ's prerogative over his religion and worship in his church.

And the greatness of the sin appeareth in these aggravations. 1. It is a mark of pitiful ignorance and pride when dust shall thus (like Nebuchadnezzar) exalt itself against God, to its certain infamy and abasement.

2. It showeth that men little know themselves, that think themselves fit to be the makers of a religion for so many others: and that they have base thoughts of all other men, while they think them unfit to worship God any other way, than that of their making; and think that they will all so far deny God as to take up a religion that is made by man.

3. It shows that they are much void of love to others, that can thus use them on so small occasion.

4. And it showeth how little true sense or reverence of christian religion they have themselves who can thus debase it, and equal their own inventions with it.

5. And it leaveth men utterly unexcusable, that will not take warning by so many hundred years' experiences of most of the churches through the world? Even when we see the yet continued divisions of the eastern and western churches, and all about a human religion (in the parts most contended about); when they read of the rivers of blood that have been shed in Piedmont, France, Germany, Belgia, Poland, Ireland, and the flames in England, and many other nations, and all for the human parts of men's religion? He that will yet go on and take no warning, may go read the eighteenth and nineteenth of the Revelation, and see what joy will be in heaven and earth, when God shall do justice upon such.

But remember that I speak all this of no other, than those expressly here described.

Quest. CXXXV. What are the mischiefs of men's error on the other extreme, who pretend that Scripture is a rule where it is not, and deny the foresaid lawful things, on pretence that Scripture is a perfect rule (say some, for all things)?

Answ. 1. They fill their own minds with a multitude of causeless scruples, which on their principles can never be resolved, and so will give themselves no rest.

2. They make themselves a religion of their own, and superstition is their daily devotion; which being erroneous, will not hang together, but is full of contradictions in itself; and which being human and bad, can never give true stability to the soul.

3. Hereby they spend their days much in melancholy troubles, and unsettled distracting doubts and fears; instead of the joys of solid faith, and hope, and love.

4. And if they escape, this their religion is contentious, wrangling, censorious, and factious, and their zeal flieth out against those that differ from their peculiar superstitions and conceits.

5. And hereupon they are usually mutable and unsettled in their religion; this year for one, and the next for another; because there is no certainty in their own inventions and conceits.

6. And hereupon they still fall into manifold parties, because each man maketh a religion to himself, by his misinterpretation of God's word; so that there is no end of their divisions.

7. And they do a great deal of hurt in the church, by putting the same distracting and dividing conceits into the heads of others. And young christians, and women, and ignorant, well meaning people, that are not able to know who is in the right, do often turn to that party which they think most strict and godly (though it be such as our quakers). And the very good conceit of the people whom they take it from, doth settle so strong a prejudice in their mind, as no argument or evidence scarcely can work out; and so education, converse, and human estimation breedeth a succession of dividers, and troublers of the churches.

8. They sin against God by calling good evil, and light darkness, and honouring superstition, which is the work of Satan, with holy names.385

9. They sin by adding to the word of God; while they say of abundance of lawful things, This is unlawful, and that is against the word of God, and pretend that their Touch not, taste not, handle not, is in the Scriptures.386 For while they make it a rule for every circumstance in particular, they must squeeze, and force, and wrest it, to find out all those circumstances in it which were never there; and so by false expositions make the Scriptures another thing.

10. And how great a sin is it to father Satan's works on God, and to say that all these and these things are forbidden or commanded in the Scripture, and so to belie the Lord and the word of truth.

11. It engageth all subjects against their rulers' laws and government, and involveth them in the sin of denying them just obedience; while all the statute book must be found in the Scriptures, or else condemned as unlawful.

12. It maintaineth disobedience in churches, and causeth schisms and confusions unavoidably; for they that will neither obey the pastors, nor join with the churches, till they can show scriptures particularly for every translation, method, metre, tune, and all that is done, must join with no churches in the world.

13. It bringeth rebellion and confusion into families, while children and servants must learn no catechism, hear no minister, give no account, observe no hours of prayer, nay, nor do any work, but what there is a particular scripture for.

14. It sets men on enthusiastical expectations, and irrational, scandalous worshipping of God, while all men must avoid all those methods, phrases, books, helps, which are not expressly or particularly in Scripture, and men must not use their own inventions, or prudence, in the right ordering of the works of religion.

15. It destroyeth christian love and concord, while men are taught to censure all others, that use any thing in God's worship which is not particularly in Scripture, and so to censure all true worshippers in the world.

16. Yea, it will tempt men at last to be weary of their own religion, because they will find it an unsatisfactory, uncomfortable, tiresome thing, to do their own superstitious work.

17. And they will tempt all that they draw into this opinion, to be weary of religion also. And truly had not God's part, which is wise, and good, and pleasant, prevailed against the hurtfulness of men's superstition, which is foolish, bad, and unpleasant, religion had ere this been cast off as a wearisome, distracting thing; or, which is as bad, been used but to delude men.

18. Yea, it will tempt men at last to infidelity; for Satan will quickly teach them to argue, that if Scripture be a perfect, particular rule, for forty things that were never there, then it is defective, and is not of God, but an undertaking of that which is not performed, and therefore is but a deceit.

19. And the notoriousness and ridiculousness of this error, will tempt the profane to make religious people a scorn.

20. Lastly, and rulers will be tempted in church and state, to take such persons for intolerable in all societies, and such whose principles are inconsistent with government. And no thanks to this opinion, if they be not tempted to dislike the Scripture itself, and instead of it to fly to the papists' traditions, and the church's legislative sovereignty, or worse.

But here also remember that I charge none with all this, but those before described.

Quest. CXXXVI. How shall we know what parts of Scripture precept or example were intended for universal, constant obligations, and what were but for the time and persons that they were then directed to?

Answ. It is not to be denied, but some things in Scripture, even in the New Testament, are not laws, much less universal and perpetual. And the difference is to be found in the Scripture itself.

1. All that is certainly of universal and perpetual obligation, which is but a transcript of the universal and perpetual law of nature.