IV. Wherefore to come unto you whose judgment is a lantern of direction for all the rest, you that frame thus the people’s hearts, not altogether (as I willingly persuade myself) of a politic intent or purpose, but yourselves being first overborne with the weight of greater men’s judgments: on your shoulders is laid the burden of upholding the cause by argument. For which purpose sentences out of the word of God ye allege divers: but so, that when the same are discussed, thus it always in a manner falleth out, that what things by virtue thereof ye urge upon us as altogether necessary, are found to be thence collected only by poor and marvellous slight conjectures. I need not give instance in any one sentence so alleged, for that I think the instance in any alleged otherwise a thing not easy to be given. A very strange thing sure it were, that such a discipline as ye speak of should be taught by Christ and his apostles in the word of God, and no church ever have found it out, nor received it till this present time1; contrariwise, the government against which ye bend yourselves be observed every where throughout all generations and ages of the Christian world, no church ever perceiving the word of God to be against it. We require you to find out but one church upon the face of the whole earth; that hath been ordered by your discipline, or hath not been ordered by ours, that is to say, by episcopal regiment, sithence the time that the blessed Apostles were here conversant.
Many things out of antiquity ye bring, as if the purest times of the Church had observed the selfsame orders which you require; and as though your desire were that the churches of old should be patterns for us to follow, and even glasses, wherein we might see the practice of that which by you is gathered out of Scripture. But the truth is, ye mean nothing less. All this is done for fashion’s sake only: for ye complain of it as of an injury, that men should be willed to seek for examples and patterns of government in any of those times that have been before2. Ye plainly hold, that from the very Apostles’ time till this present age, wherein yourselves imagine ye have found out a right pattern of sound discipline, there never was any time safe to be followed. Which thing ye thus endeavour to prove. “Out of3 Egesippus” ye say that “Eusebius4 writeth,” how although “as long as the Apostles lived the Church did remain a pure virgin, yet after the death of the Apostles, and after they were once gone whom God vouchsafed to make hearers of the divine wisdom with their own ears, the placing of wicked error began to come into the Church. Clement also in a certain place, to confirm that there was corruption of doctrine immediately after the Apostles’ time, allegeth the proverb, that ‘There are few sons like their fathers5.’ Socrates saith of the churches of Rome and Alexandria6, the most famous churches in the Apostles’ times, that about the year 430, the Roman and Alexandrian bishops, leaving the sacred function, were degenerate to a secular rule of dominion7.” Hereupon ye conclude, that it is not safe to fetch our government from any other than the Apostles’ times.
Wherein by the way it may be noted, that in proposing the Apostles’ times as a pattern for the Church to follow, though the desire of you all be one, the drift and purpose of you all is not one. The chiefest thing which lay-reformers yawn for is, that the clergy may through conformity in state and condition be apostolical, poor as the Apostles of Christ were poor. In which one circumstance if they imagine so great perfection, they must think that Church which hath such store of mendicant Friars, a church in that respect most happy. Were it for the glory of God and the good of his Church indeed that the clergy should be left even as bare as the Apostles when they had neither staff nor scrip, that God, which should lay upon them the condition of his Apostles, would I hope endue them with the selfsame affection which was in that holy Apostle, whose words concerning his own right virtuous contentment of heart, “as well how to want, as how to abound8,” are a most fit episcopal emprese. The Church of Christ is a body mystical. A body cannot stand, unless the parts thereof be proportionable. Let it therefore be required on both parts, at the hands of the clergy, to be in meanness of state like the Apostles; at the hands of the laity, to be as they were who lived under the Apostles: and in this reformation there will be, though little wisdom, yet some indifferency.
But your reformation which are of the clergy (if yet it displease you not that I should say ye are of the clergy9) seemeth to aim at a broader mark. Ye think that he which will perfectly reform must bring the form of church-discipline unto the state which then it was at. A thing neither possible, nor certain, nor absolutely convenient.
Concerning the first, what was used in the Apostles’ times, the Scripture fully declareth not; so that making their times the rule and canon of church-polity, ye make a rule, which being not possible to be fully known, is as impossible to be kept.
Again, sith the later even of the Apostles’ own times had that which in the former was not thought upon; in this general proposing of the apostolical times, there is no certainty which should be followed: especially seeing that ye give us great cause to doubt how far ye allow those times10. For albeit “the loover of antichristian building were not,” ye say, as then “set up, yet the foundations thereof were secretly and under the ground laid in the Apostles’ times11:’ so that all other times ye plainly reject, and the Apostles’ own times ye approve with marvellous great suspicion, leaving it intricate and doubtful, wherein we are to keep ourselves unto the pattern of their times.
Thirdly, whereas it is the error of the common multitude to consider only what hath been of old, and if the same were well, to see whether still it continue; if not, to condemn that presently which is, and never to search upon what ground or consideration the change might grow: such rudeness cannot be in you so well borne with, whom learning and judgment hath enabled much more soundly to discern how far the times of the Church and the orders thereof may alter without offence. True it is, the ancienter12, the better ceremonies of religion are; howbeit, not absolutely true and without exception: but true only so far forth as those different ages do agree in the state of those things, for which at the first those rites, orders, and ceremonies, were instituted. In the Apostles’ times that was harmless, which being now revived would be scandalous; as their oscula sancta13. Those feasts of charity14, which being instituted by the Apostles, were retained in the Church long after, are not now thought any where needful. What man is there of understanding, unto whom it is not manifest how the way of providing for the clergy by tithes, the device of almshouses for the poor, the sorting out of the people into their several parishes, together with sundry other things which the Apostles’ times could not have, (being now established,) are much more convenient and fit for the Church of Christ, than if the same should be taken away for conformity’s sake with the ancientest and first times?
The orders therefore, which were observed in the Apostles’ times, are not to be urged as a rule universally either sufficient or necessary. If they be, nevertheless on your part it still remaineth to be better proved, that the form of discipline, which ye entitle apostolical, was in the Apostles’ times exercised. For of this very thing ye fail even touching that which ye make most account of15, as being matter of substance in discipline, I mean the power of your lay-elders, and the difference of your Doctors from the Pastors in all churches. So that in sum, we may be bold to conclude, that besides these last times, which for insolency, pride, and egregious contempt of all good order, are the worst, there are none wherein ye can truly affirm, that the complete form of your discipline, or the substance thereof, was practised.
The evidence therefore of antiquity failing you, ye fly to the judgments of such learned men, as seem by their writings to be of opinion, that all Christian churches should receive your discipline, and abandon ours. Wherein, as ye heap up the names of a number of men not unworthy to be had in honour; so there are a number whom when ye mention, although it serve you to purpose with the ignorant and vulgar sort, who measure by tale and not by weight, yet surely they who know what quality and value the men are of, will think ye draw very near the dregs. But were they all of as great account as the best and chiefest amongst them, with us notwithstanding neither are they, neither ought they to be of such reckoning, that their opinion or conjecture should cause the laws of the Church of England to give place. Much less when they neither do all agree in that opinion, and of them which are at agreement, the most part through a courteous inducement have followed one man as their guide, finally that one therein not unlikely to have swerved16. If any chance to say it is probable that in the Apostles’ times there were lay-elders, or not to mislike the continuance of them in the Church, or to affirm that Bishops at the first were a name but not a power distinct from Presbyters, or to speak any thing in praise of those Churches which are without episcopal regiment, or to reprove the fault of such as abuse that calling; all these ye register for men persuaded as you are, that every Christian Church standeth bound by the law of God to put down Bishops, and in their rooms to elect an Eldership so authorized as you would have it for the government of each parish. Deceived greatly they are therefore, who think that all they whose names are cited amongst the favourers of this cause, are on any such verdict agreed17.
Yet touching some material points of your discipline, a kind of agreement we grant there is amongst many divines of reformed Churches abroad. For, first, to do as the Church of Geneva did the learned in some other Churches must needs be the more willing, who having used in like manner not the slow and tedious help of proceeding by public authority, but the people’s more quick endeavour for alteration, in such an exigent I see not well how they could have stayed to deliberate about any other regiment than that which already was devised to their hands, that which in like case had been taken, that which was easiest to be established without delay, that which was likeliest to content the people by reason of some kind of sway which it giveth them. When therefore the example of one Church was thus at the first almost through a kind of constraint or necessity followed by many, their concurrence in persuasion about some material points belonging to the same polity is not strange. For we are not to marvel greatly, if they which have all done the same thing, do easily embrace the same opinion as concerning their own doings.
Besides, mark I beseech you that which Galen in matter of philosophy noteth18; for the like falleth out even in questions of higher knowledge. It fareth many times with men’s opinions as with rumours and reports. “That which a credible person telleth is easily thought probable by such as are well persuaded of him. But if two, or three, or four, agree all in the same tale, they judge it then to be out of controversy, and so are many times overtaken for want of due consideration; either some common cause leading them all into error, or one man’s oversight deceiving many through their too much credulity and easiness of belief.” Though ten persons be brought to give testimony in any cause, yet if the knowledge they have of the thing whereunto they come as witnesses, appear to have grown from some one amongst them, and to have spread itself from hand to hand, they all are in force but as one testimony. Nor is it otherwise here where the daughter churches do speak their mother’s dialect; here where so many sing one song, by reason that he is the guide of the choir19, concerning whose deserved authority amongst even the gravest divines we have already spoken at large. Will ye ask what should move those many learned to be followers of one man’s judgment, no necessity of argument forcing them thereunto? Your demand is answered by yourselves. Loth ye are to think that they, whom ye judge to have attained as sound knowledge in all points of doctrine as any since the Apostles’ time, should mistake in discipline20. Such is naturally our affection, that whom in great things we mightily admire, in them we are not persuaded willingly that any thing should be amiss. The reason whereof is, “for that as dead flies putrify the ointment of the apothecary21, so a little folly him that is in estimation for wisdom22.” This in every profession hath too much authorized the judgments of a few. This with Germans hath caused Luther, and with many other Churches Calvin, to prevail in all things. Yet are we not able to define, whether the wisdom of that God, (who setteth before us in holy Scripture so many admirable patterns of virtue, and no one of them without somewhat noted wherein they were culpable, to the end that to Him alone it might always be acknowledged, “Thou only art holy, thou only art just23;”) might not permit those worthy vessels of his glory to be in some things blemished with the stain of human frailty, even for this cause, lest we should esteem of any man above that which behoveth.
← Preface, Ch. iii. 2. · Contents · Their calling for trial by disputation. →
Footnotes
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[Bancroft, Sermon at S. Paul’s Cross, 9 Feb. 1588/9, p. 10, 11, has the same affirmation and challenge almost in the same words. “A very strange matter if it were true, that Christ should erect a form of government for the ruling of his Church, to continue from his departure out of the world until his coming again; and that the same should never be once thought of or put in practice for the space of 1500 years: or at the least (to take them at their best) that the government and kingdom of Christ should then be overthrown, when by all men’s confessions the divinity of his Person, the virtue of his Priesthood, the power of his office as He is a Prophet, and the honour of his kingly Authority was so godly, so learnedly, and so mightily established.”] ↩
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T. C. lib. i. p. 97. ↩
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[Id. ibid. and ii. 507-511.] ↩
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Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. cap. 32. iv. 22. [Ὁ αὐτὸς ἀνὴρ ἐπιλέγει, ὡς ἄρα μέχρι τω̑ν τότε χρόνων παρθένος καθαρὰ καὶ ἀδιάϕθορος ἔμεινεν ἡ ἐκκλησία, ἐν ἀδήλῷ που σκότει ϕωλευόντων εἴσετι τότε, τω̑ν, εἰ καί τινες ὑπη̑ρχον, παραϕθείρειν ἐπιχειρούντων τὸν ὑγιη̑ κανόνα του̑ σωτηρίου κηρύγματος. And in b. iv. 22, he cites the very words of Hegesippus, Διὰ του̑το ἐκάλουν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν παρθένον· οὔπω γὰρ ἔϕθαρτο ἀκοαι̑ς ματαίαις. See Dr. Routh’s note, Reliquiæ Sacræ, i. 233.] ↩
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Lib. Strom. somewhat after the beginning. [Ed. Potter. t. i. 322.] [Ὀλίγοι δὲ οἱ πατράσιν ὅμοιοι; from Hom. Od. ii. 276.] ↩
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Hist. Eccles. lib. vii. cap. 11. ↩
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[Τη̑ς Ῥωμαίων ἐπισκοπη̑ς, ὁμοίως τῃ̑ Ἀλεξανδρέων, πέρα τη̑ς ἱερωσύνης, ἐπὶ δυναστείαν ἤδη πάλαι προελθούσης.] ↩
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Phil. iv. 12. [For the word emprese or impress see Shakespeare, Rich. II. act III. sc. 1.] ↩
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[T. C. iii. 219. “Those which were baptized in their beds were thereby made unapt to have any place among the clergy (as they call them).”] ↩
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[Penry, Brief Discovery, &c. p. 20. “We know Diotrephes to have been in the Church even in the Apostles’ times … . and therefore we cannot greatly marvel, though even in their time there had been a divers government from this of the Lord’s appointment, which we labour for. For even in the Apostles’ time the mystery of iniquity began to work.”] ↩
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[T. C. i. 97. The word “loover” is also used, T. C. ii. 621. “How childishe is yt, after so long travaile to prove a bishop over the ministers off a diocese, … . in the ende to endevour to prove, that there may be superioritie? as if any man would denie this that graunted the other: and yt is to set the fondacion upon the lover.” “Louver, (from l’ouvert, Fr. an opening:) an opening for the smoke to go out at in the roof of a cottage: in the north of England, an opening at the top of a dovecote. ‘The ancient manner of building in Cornwall was, to set hearths in the midst of rooms for chimneys, which vented the smoke at a louver in the top.’ Carew, Survey of Cornwall. And see Spenser’s F. Q. vi. x. 42.” Todd’s Johnson’s Dict.] ↩
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“Antiquitas ceremoniis atque fanis tantum sanctitatis tribuere consuevit quantum adstruxerit vetustatis.” Arno. p. 746. [The words are from Minutius Felix, p. 4, line 30, ed. Elmenhorst. In many former editions, and no doubt in that which Hooker used, the dialogue of Minutius is ascribed to Arnobius.] ↩
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Rom. xvi. 16; 2 Cor. xiii. 12; 1 Thess. v. 26; 1 Pet. v. 14. In their meetings to serve God, their manner was, in the end to salute one another with a kiss; using these words, “Peace be with you.” For which cause Tertullian doth call it, signaculum orationis, “the seal of prayer.” Lib. de Orat. [c. 14.] ↩
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Epist. Jud. 12. Concerning which feasts, Saint Chrysostom saith, “Statis diebus mensas faciebant communes, et peracta synaxi post sacramentorum communionem inibant convivium, divitibus quidem cibos afferentibus, pauperibus autem et qui nihil habebant etiam vocatis.” [Καθάπερ ἐπὶ τω̑ν τρισχιλίων τω̑ν ἐξ ἀρχη̑ς πιστευσάντων, κοιυῃ̑ πάντες εἱστιω̑ντο καὶ κοινὰ πάντα ἐκέκτηντο, οὕτω καὶ τότε ὄτε ταυ̑τα ἔγραψεν ὁ Ἀπόστολος ἐγίνετο, οὐχ οὕτω μὲν μετὰ ἀκριβείας, ὥσπερ δὲ τις ἀπόρροια τη̑ς κοινωνίας ἐκείνη, ἐναπομείνασα καὶ εἰς τοὺς μετὰ ταυ̑τα κατέβη. Καὶ ἔπειδαν συνέβαινε τοὺς μὲν πένητας εἰ̑ναι, τοὺς δὲ πλουσίους, τὰ μὲν ἑαυτω̑ν οὐ κατετίθεντο πάντα εἰς μέσον, κοινὰς δὲ ἐποιου̑ντο τὰς τραπέζας ἐν ἡμέραις νενομισμέναις, ὡς εἰκὸς, καὶ τη̑ς συνάξεως ἀπαρτισθείσης μετὰ τὴν τω̑ν μυστηρίων κοινωνίαν ἐπὶ κοινὶν πάντες ᾔεσαν εὐωχίαν, τω̑ν μὲν πλουτούντων ϕερόντων τὰ ἐδέσματα, τω̑ν δὲ πενομένων καὶ οὐδὲν ἐχόντων ὑπ’ αὐτω̑ν καλουμένων καὶ κοινῃ̑ πάντων ἑστιωμένων. iii. 416.] In 1 Cor. xi. 17, Hom. xxvii. Of the same feasts in like sort, Tertullian. “Cœna nostra de nomine rationem sui ostendit. Vocatur enim ἀγάπη, id quod est penes Græcos dilectio. Quantiscunque sumptibus constet, lucrum est pietatis nomine facere sumptum.” Apol. cap. 39. ↩
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[“Tantum inter cæteros eminent Presbyteri isti non docentes, ‘quantum lenta solent interviburna cupressi:’ tantumque præstare videntur reliquis, ut ipsorum nomine totus hic consessus Presbyterium dicatur. Quum igitur tota illa moles novæ disciplinæ… . hoc uno fundamento nitatur… . &c.” Sutcliffe de Presbyt. p. 90.] ↩
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[“Swarved”—and so always in 1st ed. 1594.] ↩
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[Full evidence of this point may be seen in Whitgift’s two works.] ↩
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Galen. clas. 2, lib. de cujusque Anim. Peccat. Notitia atque Medela, [t. i. p. 366. Basil. 1538. —μηδενὶ ψευδω̑ς συγκαταθέμενον ἑαυτὸν, ὥσπερ ἑκάστης ἡμέρας ὁρω̑ παμπόλλους τω̑ν ϕιλω̑ν, ἐνίους μὲν ἑνὶ τω̑ν εἰπόντων ὁτιου̑ν πιστεύσαντας· … . προπετω̑ς δὲ καὶ ὃ τρίσιν ἢ τέσσαρσιν, ἄνευ του̑ διορίσασθαι πότερον ἐνδέχεται πάντας αὐτοὺς ἐκ μια̑ς αἰτίας κοινη̑ς ἀληθεύειν, ἢ ψεύδεσθαι πάντας ἐκ μια̑ς αἰτίας κοινη̑ς.] ↩
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[“quier,” ed. 1594.] ↩
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Petition to the Queen’s Majesty, p. 14.—[“It may be that they who have attained to as sound knowledge in all points of doctrine as any since the apostles’ time should mistake in discipline. It may be that they whom the Spirit of truth and wisdom hath directed in expounding the Scriptures should be always forsaken of that Spirit when they come to expound or speak of a text concerning discipline . . But . . men not partial will still make scruples in these matters.”] ↩
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[“apoticarie,” ed. 1594.] ↩
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Eccles. x. 1. ↩
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[ὅτι μόνος ὅσιος. Apoc. xv. 4. Σὺ μόνος Ἅγιος,—σὺ μόνος Κύριος. Morning Hymn in Apost. Constit. vii. 4, used by our Church in the Post-Communion.] ↩