81. So, then, the word of God and the law of Christ, which by so evident difference separateth and distinguisheth ecclesiastical government from the civil, forbiddeth the Christian magistrate to enter upon or usurp the ministry of the word and sacraments, or the judicial dispensing of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to invade the church government, or to challenge to himself the right of both swords, spiritual and corporal; but if any magistrate (which God forbid) should dare to arrogate to himself so much, and to enlarge his skirts so far, the church shall then straightway be constrained to complain justly, and cry out, that though the Pope is changed, yet popedom remaineth still.
82. It is unlawful, moreover, to a Christian magistrate to withstand the practice and execution of ecclesiastical discipline (whether it be that which belongs to a particular church, or the matter be carried to a class or synod). Now the magistrate withstandeth the ecclesiastic discipline, either by prohibitions and unjust laws, or, by his evil example, stirring up and inciting others to the contempt thereof, or to the trampling it under foot.
83. Surely the Christian magistrate (if at any time he give any grievous scandal to the church), seeing he also is a member of the church, ought nowise disdain to submit himself to the power of the keys; neither is this to be marvelled at, for even as the office of the minister of the church is nowise subordinate and subjected to the civil power, but the person of the minister, as he is a member of the commonwealth, is subject thereto, so the civil power itself, or the magistrate, as a magistrate, is not subjected to ecclesiastical power; yet that man, who is a magistrate, ought (as he is a member of the church) to be under the church's censure of his manners, after the example of the emperor [pg 5-032] Theodosius, unless he will despise and set at nought ecclesiastical discipline, and indulge the swelling pride of the flesh.
84. If any man should again object that the magistrate is not indeed to resist ecclesiastical government, yet that the abuses thereof are to be corrected and taken away by him, the answer is ready. In the worst and most troublesome times, or in the decayed and troubled estate of things, when the ordinance of God in the church is violently turned into tyranny, to the treading down of true religion, and to the oppressing of the professors thereof, and when nothing almost is sound or whole, divers things are yielded to be lawful to godly magistrates, which are not ordinarily lawful for them, that so to extraordinary diseases extraordinary remedies may be applied. So also the magistrate abusing his power unto tyranny, and making havoc of all, it is lawful to resist him by some extraordinary ways and means, which are not ordinarily to be allowed.
85. Yet ordinarily, and by common or known law and right in settled churches, if any man have recourse to the magistrate to complain, that, through abuse of ecclesiastical discipline, injury is done to him, or if any sentence of the pastors and elders of the church, whether concerning faith or discipline, do displease or seem unjust unto the magistrate himself, it is not for that cause lawful to draw those ecclesiastical causes to a civil tribunal, or to bring in a kind of political or civil popedom.
86. What then? Shall it be lawful ordinarily for ministers and elders to do what they list? Or shall the governors in the churches, glorying in the law, by their transgression dishonour God? God forbid. For first, if they shall trespass in anything against the magistrate or municipal laws, whether by intermeddling in judging of civil causes, or otherwise disturbing the peace and order of the commonwealth, they are liable to civil trial and judgments, and it is in the power of the magistrate to restrain and punish them.
87. Again, it hath been before showed, that to ecclesiastical evils ecclesiastical remedies are appointed and fitted, for the church is, no less than the commonwealth, through the grace of God, sufficient to itself in reference [pg 5-033] unto her own end, and as in the commonwealth, so in the church, the error of inferior judgments and assemblies, or their evil government, is to be corrected by superior judgments and assemblies, and so still by them of the same order, lest one order be confounded with another, or one government be intermingled with another government. What shall now the adversaries of ecclesiastical power object here, which those who admit not the yoke of the magistrate may not be ready, in like manner, to transfer against the civil judicatories and government of the commonwealth, seeing it happeneth sometimes that the commonwealth is no less ill governed than the church?
88. If any man shall prosecute the argument, and say that yet no remedy is here showed which may be applied to the injustice or error of a national synod, surely he stumbleth against the same stone, seeing he weigheth not the matter with an equal balance, for the same may, in like sort, fall back and be cast upon parliaments, or any supreme senate of a commonwealth, for who seeth not the judgment of the supreme civil senate to be nothing more infallible, yea, also, in matters of faith and ecclesiastical discipline, more apt and prone to error (as being less accustomed to sacred studies) than the judgment of the national synod? What medicines then, or what sovereign plasters shall be had, which may be fit for the curing and healing of the errors and miscarriages of the supreme magistrates and senate? The very like, and beside all this, other and more effectual medicines by which the errors of national synods may be healed, are possible to be had.
89. There wanteth not a divine medicine and sovereign balm in Gilead, for although the popish opinion of the infallibility of counsels be worthily rejected and exploded, yet it is not in vain that Christ hath promised he shall be present with an assembly which indeed and in truth meeteth in his name with such an assembly verily he useth to be present, by a spiritual aid and assistance of his own Spirit, to uphold the falling, or to raise up the fallen. Whence it is that divers times the errors of former synods are discovered and amended by the latter; sometimes, also, the second or afterthoughts of one and the same synod are the wiser and the better.
90. Furthermore, the line of ecclesiastical subordination is longer and further stretched than the line of civil subordination; for a national synod must be subordinate and subject to an universal synod in the manner aforesaid, whereas yet there is no oecumenical parliament or general civil court acknowledged, unto which the supreme civil senate in this or that nation should be subject. Finally, neither is the church altogether destitute of nearer remedies whether an universal council may be had or not.