Sect. 5. It remaineth to try what force of reason the Bishop hath to back his opinion. As for the ragged rabble of human testimonies which he raketh together, I should but weary my reader, and spend paper and ink in vain, if I should insist to answer them one by one. Only thus much I say of all those sentences of the fathers and constitutions of princes and emperors about things ecclesiastical, together with the histories of the submission of some ecclesiastical causes to emperors,—let him who pleaseth read them; and it shall appear,
1. That some of those things whereunto the power of princes was applied were unlawful.
2. There were many of them things temporal or civil, not ecclesiastical or spiritual, nor such as pertain to the worship of God.
3. There were some of them ecclesiastical or spiritual things, but then princes did only ratify that which had been determined by councils, and punish with the civil sword such as did stubbornly disobey the church's lawful constitutions. Neither were princes allowed to do any more.
4. Sometimes they interposed their authority, and meddled in causes spiritual or ecclesiastical, even before the definition of councils; yet did they not judge nor decide [pg 1-279] those matters, but did only convocate councils, and urge the clergy to see to the mis-ordered and troubled state of the church, and by their wholesome laws and ordinances, to provide the best remedies for the same which they could.
5. At other times princes have done somewhat more in ecclesiastical matters; but this was only in extraordinary cases, when the clergy were so corrupted, that either through ignorance they were unable, or through malice and perverseness unwilling, to do their duty in deciding of controversies, making of canons, using the keys, and managing of other ecclesiastical matters, in which case princes might and did, by their coactive temporal jurisdiction, avoid disorder, error, and superstition, and cause a reformation of the church.
6. Princes have likewise, in rightly constituted and well reformed churches, by their own regal authority, straitly enjoined things pertaining to the worship of God, but those things were the very same which God's own written word had expressly commanded.
7. When princes went beyond those limits and bounds, they took upon them to judge and command more than God hath put within the compass of their power.
Sect. 6. But as touching the passages of holy Scripture which the Bishop allegeth, I will answer thereto particularly. And first, he produceth that place, Deut. xvii. 19, where the king was appointed to have the book of the law of God with him, that he might learn to fear the Lord his God, and to keep all the words of this law and these statutes to do them. What logic, I pray, can from this place infer that princes have the supreme power of governing all ecclesiastical causes? Next, the Bishop tells us of David's appointing of the offices of the Levites, and dividing of their courses, 1 Chron. xxiii and his commending of the same to Solomon, 1 Chron. xxviii.; but he might have observed that David did not this as a king, but as a prophet, or man of God, 2 Chron. viii. 14, yea, those orders and courses of the Levites were also commanded by other prophets of the Lord, 2 Chron. xxix. 25. As touching Solomon's appointing of the courses and charges of the priests, Levites, and porters, he did not of himself, nor by his own princely authority, but because David, the man of God, had so commanded, 2 Chron. viii. 24. For Solomon [pg 1-280] received from David a pattern for all that which he was to do in the work of the house of the Lord, and also for the courses of the priests and Levites, 1 Chron. xxviii. 11-13.
Sect. 7. The Bishop comes on and tells us that Hezekiah did apply his regal power to the reformation of the Levites, and of the worship of God in their hands, saying, “Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.”